[sf-lug] What's the command for ...; apropos, etc.

[Michael Paoli]

What's the command for ...; apropos

Or, when you don't know what the command is, try finding it via apropos.

E.g. want to schedule a command to run sometime in the future?

$ apropos future later schedule | fgrep '(1'
apmsleep (1)         - go into suspend or standby mode and wake-up later
at (1)               - queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution
atq (1)              - queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution
atrm (1)             - queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution
batch (1)            - queue, examine or delete jobs for later execution
ps2pdf12 (1)         - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3-and-later
compatible) using ghostscript
ps2pdf13 (1)         - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4-and-later
compatible) using ghostscript
kalarm (1)           - Personal alarm message, command and email scheduler for KDE
$

I also used fgrep to limit to stuff in section 1 of the manual.

For some *nix flavors, man -k may be equivalent or similar to apropos,
and apropos may not be present.

Which manual sections are which?
$ apropos Intro | grep '^intro ('
intro (1)            - Introduction to user commands
intro (2)            - Introduction to system calls
intro (3)            - Introduction to library functions
intro (4)            - Introduction to special files
intro (5)            - Introduction to file formats
intro (6)            - Introduction to games
intro (7)            - Introduction to conventions and miscellany section
intro (8)            - Introduction to administration and privileged commands
$
At least historically, each Unix manual section had an entry for Intro
(with an uppercase I, so it would come first in the ASCII sort, with all
other manual pages starting with lowercase ASCII letters).

> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 08:10:12 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Alex Kleider <a_kleider at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] email to my future self
> To: Linux userGroup <sf-lug at linuxmafia.com>

> I was not aware of "at"
> time to "man at"