<story><title>Vim Creep</title><url>http://www.rudism.com/s/vimcreep</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xutopia</author><text>Can you explain to me what apropos does?</text></item><item><author>jdludlow</author><text>My first week in college a distant relative of mine at the same school pulled me into the Sun lab. The sum-total of his instructions were:&lt;p&gt;* This is how you log in.&lt;p&gt;* This is ls.&lt;p&gt;* This is cd.&lt;p&gt;* This is man.&lt;p&gt;* This is apropos.&lt;p&gt;* Learn vi.&lt;p&gt;* Have fun.&lt;p&gt;What came from that 5 minute intro to Unix has been applied orders of magnitude more often than anything from 5 years of an EE degree.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdludlow</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  $ man apropos
  
  apropos searches a set of database files containing
  short descriptions of system commands for keywords and
  displays the result on the standard output.

&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
It answers the question &quot;I wonder how to do [this English word].&quot;&lt;p&gt;For example: &quot;I wonder how I copy a file.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  $ apropos copy
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Dumps out all of the matching entries from the man pages for the word &quot;copy&quot;. If you just wanted general commands, as opposed to library functions, and assuming your system organizes man page sections in the typical manner, you can filter it down with:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  $ apropos copy | grep &quot;(1)&quot;
  cp                   (1)  - copy files and directories 
  cpio                 (1)  - copy files to and from archives&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Vim Creep</title><url>http://www.rudism.com/s/vimcreep</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xutopia</author><text>Can you explain to me what apropos does?</text></item><item><author>jdludlow</author><text>My first week in college a distant relative of mine at the same school pulled me into the Sun lab. The sum-total of his instructions were:&lt;p&gt;* This is how you log in.&lt;p&gt;* This is ls.&lt;p&gt;* This is cd.&lt;p&gt;* This is man.&lt;p&gt;* This is apropos.&lt;p&gt;* Learn vi.&lt;p&gt;* Have fun.&lt;p&gt;What came from that 5 minute intro to Unix has been applied orders of magnitude more often than anything from 5 years of an EE degree.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anextio</author><text>It searches for a keyword in the manpages and tells you what page contains the text.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    $ apropos printf
    fmtcheck(3)              - sanitizes user-supplied printf(3)-style format string
    format(ntcl)             - Format a string in the style of sprintf
    fwkpfv(1)                - FireWire kprintf viewer
    fwprintf(3), swprintf(3), vfwprintf(3), vswprintf(3), vwprintf(3), wprintf(3) - formatted wide character output conversion
    printf(1)                - formatted output
    printf(3), fprintf(3), sprintf(3), snprintf(3), asprintf(3), dprintf(3), vprintf(3), vfprintf(3), vsprintf(3), vsnprintf(3), vasprintf(3), vdprintf(3) - formatted output conversion
    wprintf_l(3), fwprintf_l(3), swprintf_l(3), vwprintf_l(3), vfwprintf_l(3), vswprintf_l(3) - formatted wide character output conversion&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></comment>