Recipe 1.3. Finding Appropriate man Pages
1.3.1 Problem
You need a
program or utility to perform a specific function—for example,
counting the words in a file—but you don't
know what to look for. If you knew what you were looking for, you
wouldn't need to look for it, right? How do you get
out of this dilemma?
1.3.2 Solution
Do keyword searches with
apropos or man -k. For
example, if you want a command to count the words in a file, use:
$ apropos count words
or:
$ man -k count words
american-english (5) - a list of english words
grpconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups.
grpunconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups.
kmessedwords (1) - a letter order game for KDE
lppasswd (1) - add, change, or delete digest passwords.
pwconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups.
pwunconv (8) - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups.
shadowconfig (8) - toggle shadow passwords on and off
wc (1) - print the number of newlines, words, and bytes in files
It doesn't matter which you use;
apropos and man -k are the
same. There are a lot of options, but wc looks
like the program you want.
Remember the -f switch, to find all versions of a man
page:
$ man -f manpath
manpath (1) - determine search path for manual pages
manpath (5) - format of the /etc/manpath.config file
1.3.3 Discussion
These commands perform keyword searches in the Description sections
of the man pages. You can use any number of search terms, but the
more you use, the more results you'll get, because
they search each keyword in sequence.
Because these are literal keyword searches, broad concepts like
"bandwidth shaping" or
"user management" do not carry the
same meaning for apropos and man
-k; they see "bandwidth
shaping" as two unrelated search terms, so
single-word searches usually work best.
1.3.4 See Also
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