2.3.3.2. The whatis and apropos commands

A short index of explanations for commands is available using the whatis command, like in the examples below:

[your_prompt] whatis ls
ls                   (1)  - list directory contents

This displays short information about a command, and the first section in the collection of man pages that contains an appropriate page.

If you don't know where to get started and which man page to read, apropos gives more information. Say that you don't know how to start a browser, then you could enter the following command:

another prompt> apropos browser
Galeon [galeon](1)  - gecko-based GNOME web browser
lynx           (1)  - a general purpose distributed information browser 
                    for the World Wide Web
ncftp          (1)  - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol
opera          (1)  - a graphical web browser
pilot          (1)  - simple file system browser in the style of the 
                    Pine Composer
pinfo          (1)  - curses based lynx-style info browser
pinfo [pman]   (1)  - curses based lynx-style info browser
viewres        (1x)  - graphical class browser for Xt

After pressing Enter you will see that a lot of browser related stuff is on your machine: not only web browsers, but also file and FTP browsers, and browsers for documentation. If you have development packages installed, you may also have the accompanying man pages dealing with writing programs having to do with browsers. Generally, a command with a man page in section one, so one marked with "(1)", is suitable for trying out as a user. The user who issued the above apropos might consequently try to start the commands galeon, lynx or opera, since these clearly have to do with browsing the world wide web.