Chapter 9. whatis apropos?

I hate to admit it, but my memory is not as good as it once was. When I can’t remember something on my Linux box, I often open a console window to get to the CLI for assistance. Once at the command line, I take advantage of these two handy little CLI tools: whatis and apropos. Maybe you’ll find them useful too.

Remember apropos

In those moments when my memory is not all that she should be, it’s good to know whatis apropos. That’s not a typo, by the way: whatis and apropos are two separate but related programs.

Here’s how they are related. Both whatis and apropos use the whatis database to help remember things like program names, functionality, and keywords.

Typically, Linux distributions schedule a program called makewhatis ...

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