Man Pages

 

If the makewhatis program has been run by the system administrator, there is at least the opportunity to partially search through the man pages looking for an appropriate man page based on some characteristic. This capability is accessed through the apropos program, or the -k (for keyword) switch to the man program.

For example, asking for the list of man pages which involve the word ``copy'' produces over 50 possibilities, including:

 XCopyPlane (3x)      - copy areas
 tiffcp (1)           - copy (and possibly convert) a TIFF file
 bcopy (3)            - copy byte strings
 cp (1)               - copy files

With a new user, it is only this last entry which is likely to be the one they want.

 
• How to Read a Man Page