Command to search through manuals?

Question

Can't remember it. Tried to google it with no luck. I encountered it last week but the browsing history is wiped.

Here's what that command does. You just write it in terminal with some word. It will search through all the manuals from repository and print out the list of matches with short description.

I don't know what you're talking about, but in case that helps here's a trick I use to search (say) an option of a command on its man page: man <command> | grep -A 10 '<escaped_option>', where <escaped_option> is e.g. \-a — kos, Jun 10 '15 at 19:32
possible duplicate of How do I perform full text search in man pages? — Jacob Vlijm, Jun 10 '15 at 19:41
Also see: http://askubuntu.com/questions/20752/how-can-i-search-within-a-manpage and http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/195571/how-to-search-the-whole-manual-pages-on-linux and many (many) more. — Jacob Vlijm, Jun 10 '15 at 19:42

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 10 '15 at 19:31

4

You are looking for apropos or man -k.

From man man:

man -k printf
           Search the short descriptions and manual page names for the 
keyword printf as regular expression.  Print out any matches.  
Equivalent to apropos -r printf.

From man apropos:

apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

Check man apropos and man man for details.

answered Jun 10 '15 at 19:31

heemayl

91,753

@seeker_of_bacon Happy to help :) – heemayl Jun 10 '15 at 19:52

Command to search through manuals?

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