The apropos command is a sort of companion to the
man command. It is used to search the systems
database of commands to find anything
``appropriate'' to the words or phrases you
search for.
Apropos returns a list of commands along with a brief
description of those commands. The search is primarly focused on the command
descriptions, so this is a useful tool to find something when you
arent entirely sure what the name of the command is. However,
the searched database is large and contains programming information as well as
system commands, so not all results will be relevant. You may want to enclose
your phrase in quotes (``'') or the command
will search for each word separately.
Examples:
[jdpoisso@axiom ~]$ apropos "disk space" df (1) - report file system disk space usage df (1p) - report free disk space [jdpoisso@axiom ~]$ [jdpoisso@axiom ~]$ apropos magnify xmag (1x) - magnify parts of the screen [jdpoisso@axiom ~]$