Apropos command

[EMH]

I checked out the apropos command this morning.

Use this command when you can't think of the exact command but know of a similar word to the command.

For example, if you don't know all of the versions of edit on your system then in a shell type:

$ apropos edit

[Note: The dollar sign is your command prompt]

This will return tons of commands. You can then read about each one using

$ man joe

[Note joe is a text editor]

You can substitute any other command apropos finds on your system in place of the word joe.

Have fun.

[EMH]

I wanted to find out more information on the apropos command, so I went to my shell and typed in

$ man apropos

This brought up a synopsis and a description of apropos:(By the way, I didn't know what synopsis meant, so I went to webster.com and looked it up.)

Each manual page has a short description available within it. Apropos searches the descriptions for instances of keyword.

In apropos you can either type out the command with two dashes in front, or you can take a short cut, and use one letter with a dash in front. For example, / =escape.

This was very useful way to look up information on apropos. If you need or want to look up one of the programs on your system, you can always use apropos.