Linux Command – apropos

Apropos could be the most helpful command for a beginner. Almost every command has a manual page that gives description about what it does along with its advanced options. But the man command  cannot do much for a beginner who doesn’t know the name of the command he/she wants to know about. This is where apropos comes to the rescue.

Apropos searches the man pages for keywords provided by the user. Its like google for man pages. So you can just type apropos to know more about.

Example

amrita@amrita-desktop:~$ apropos gcc
c89-gcc (1)          - ANSI (1989) C compiler
c99-gcc (1)          - ANSI (1999) C compiler
gcc (1)              - GNU project C and C++ compiler
gcc-4.4 (1)          - GNU project C and C++ compiler
i486-linux-gnu-gcc (1) - GNU project C and C++ compiler
i486-linux-gnu-gcc-4.4 (1) - GNU project C and C++ compiler

It is a good practice to read the man page of any new command you learn. So open up your shell and man apropos now itself 🙂

Linux Command – man

What it does: Displays the manual page of a command.

To exit form manual page, press q.

If you need to know more about a command, all you have to do is type “man <command>” and press enter

Try man man to know more about man 🙂

bios@bios-11:~$ man man

Manual pages are really big so I’m not adding the page to my blog. Try em out.