Today's article has you searching your man pages... How apropos!

[KGIII]

Ever have a command on the tip of your tongue but you just can't remember it? Well, use a search engine to find it.

Otherwise, you can use 'apropos' to search your man pages. It's a pretty basic search, so you might not find it all that valuable. It's good if you can remember the description. So, there's that...

Search Your Man Pages With Apropos • Linux Tips

Today we will be showing you how to search your man pages with apropos. If you've forgotten a command, apropos might be what you're after.

linux-tips.us

Enjoy!

 

[sphen]

I never knew or saw anyone use apropos in practice. I gave up on it quickly because it rarely yielded useful results, at least not for me.

(Hey, I have decent searching skills. I belonged to the Look-It-Up Club when I was a kid.)

 

[KGIII]

Yeah, it's not all that useful unless you use basic words and weed through a lot of answers or have a good recollection of what the command's man page had in it. A real search engine will be more useful - in my experience. Still, it is of interest to me and got its own article.

 

[bob466]

I sometimes forget what day it is...so I have my commands typed out...one copy on the computer and the other in a hard plastic folder in the draw.

 

[KGIII]

I sometimes forget what day it is...so I have my commands typed out...one copy on the computer and the other in a hard plastic folder in the draw.

LOL That's one way to do it.

I have multiple .txt files full of notes. They're poorly organized, but I kinda know what is where and can usually find what I'm looking for.

 

[guiverc]

I never knew or saw anyone use apropos in practice. I gave up on it quickly because it rarely yielded useful results, at least not for me.

I've loved the command since I discovered it existed.

I may not use it often... but for those rarely used commands I may only use once every ~five years, its a useful tool to remind me of the command I'm struggling to remember.

I'm one who thinks it's a great & useful command & thus great article, so thanks @KGIII

 

[KGIII]

I'm one who thinks it's a great & useful command & thus great article, so thanks @KGIII

I sparingly use it, as mentioned in the article, but it'd probably be faster if I used a search engine. I start with generic terms and wade through the output looking for the name. I don't really use it all that often, but I will reach for it if I need to. Something about using a search engine would seem like defeat. I also recognize that I'm definitely not the 'normal' user of modern desktop Linux.

 

[osprey]

I've loved the command since I discovered it existed.

I may not use it often... but for those rarely used commands I may only use once every ~five years, its a useful tool to remind me of the command I'm struggling to remember.

I'm one who thinks it's a great & useful command & thus great article, so thanks @KGIII

Congrats, guiverc! I could not stop smiling at that absolutely magnificent achievement of struggling to remember a command only "once every ~five years" That is gold medal, top shelf, pristine computing accomplishment in my view. I am envious. In my own case, I'm a rather regular user of: man -k <someTerm>, which is a synonym for apropos, which probably reflects on my altogether different (read: significantly inferior) level of memory

 

[guiverc]

In my own case, I'm a rather regular user of: man -k

I'd be happy with that too, if only I remembered there was a -k option for man.. but I found

ap<tab><tab>

easier (instead of man man to look up the -k I kept forgetting)..

Whilst I found remembering apropos problematic (it sounds greek to me, as I never used/learnt that word in english) I do remember the ap & recognize the rest of it after I hit the TAB key twice (relying on autocomplete). Having autocomplete helped make it usable for me

 

[KGIII]

Man, I lost a command I used 6 months ago and couldn't find it even in my various .bash_history files.

Five years? After five years I'm probably not going to remember much at all.