[X-Unix] What's the command?

[Steve Morris]

If you like apropos you should know about whatis. whatis is a similar
command except it only matches whole words. For example if you want to
find items concerning the C language use "whatis C." You don't want to
use "apropos c" because it returns every entry that has the letter c
in it, i.e. most of them, which is not very useful.

Both are part of the "man" utility set. They search the title and
synopsis sections of man pages. From the man man page:

   man -f     Equivalent to whatis.
   man -k    Equivalent to apropos.

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Dave Higgins <dhiggins at mchsi.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 16, 2010, at 11:58 PM, Scott Buntin wrote:
>
>> Steve already answered this, but it brought to mind another almost-forgotten command line goodie: apropos ("which commands might have something to do with …"). Similarly, man -k works too.
>
> Hear that thumping? That's me knocking my hand to my head about 5 times. I can think of SO many times in the past that I've searched around in Google and elsewhere for other commands (either known and forgotten, like this, or looking for something new to me) where this apropos would have probably fit the bill.
>
> This one IS going into the notes, as well as the fact that I archive mail for ages, so I should be able to come back to this if I happen to forget it.
>
> Nice call.
>
> Dave.
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