"apropos options" in man -k not working

English Open Chat
1

I thought I could totally replace “apropos” (in my mind :)) and just use “man -k”.

In “man man”, I saw: man -k [apropos options] regexp

Here is the apropos version of a sample search:

apropos -s 1 stat

The man version:

man -k -s 1 stat

The [apropos options], in this case -s 1, was ignored, and all sections searched, not just 1.

Looking around, I have the environment variable, “MAN_POSIXLY_CORRECT”, so I don’t get the prompt when a man name appears more than once (it’s not documented in “man man”). Additional searching and testing didn’t turn anything up.

Is the documentation incorrect? Is my command malformed?

Thank you.

2

On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:06:01 +0000, opensuseforumorg42 wrote:

> apropos -s 1 stat
>
> The man version:
>
> man -k -s 1 stat
>
> The [apropos options], in this case -s 1, was ignored, and all sections
> searched, not just 1.

What if you do:

man -s 1 -k stat

?

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

Looks like a bug to me. I’d report it if I were you and let the packagers pass it upstream.

4

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.

it says man -k == apropos -r, but not man -k [apropos options] ==
apropos -r [apropos options]

5

Isn’t that the point of putting [apropos options] in the synopsis? I mean, it says [apropos options], not [only the supported apropos options].

PS: It’s right at the top of the page if you missed it:

man -k [apropos options] regexp …