apropos

Purpose

View a list of all man pages that contain a specific keyword.

Syntax

apropos keyword

Options

None

Description

The apropos command looks up the keyword in a database (known as the whatis database) the /usr/sbin/makewhatis program creates. The whatis database is an index of keywords contained in all of the man pages in the system. Unfortunately, when you try apropos with a simple keyword such as find, you may end up with a long listing of man pages because the word find appears in many man pages.