[zeugma]

Many years ago, the first Unix system that I ever supported was DEC-Unix running on an 8810. We actually had a full printed man set. I don't know why. At the time I didn't know much of anything about Unix. In order to find a command, (even using the 'man' program), I first had to know what the command was. I remember the first time I found the 'apropos' command. Suddenly, I could actually search man pages for what I was looking for! OMG, it was like a revelation from God.

I'll admit that man is useful, but it was apropos that finally turned Unix into something other than a bashing-head-on-keyboard event for me.

For Unix virgins, the 'apropos' command searches the titles of man pages for keywords for you. So, if you want to know what commands have something to do with "swap", you might say something like this...

$ apropos swap
all-swaps (7)        - event signalling that all swap partitions have been activated
ecryptfs-setup-swap (1) - ensure that any swap space is encrypted
mkswap (8)           - set up a Linux swap area
swaplabel (8)        - print or change the label or UUID of a swap area
swapoff (8)          - enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping
swapon (8)           - enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping

'man -k' will do the same thing, but I still use apropos to this day.

$ man -k swap
all-swaps (7)        - event signalling that all swap partitions have been activated
ecryptfs-setup-swap (1) - ensure that any swap space is encrypted
mkswap (8)           - set up a Linux swap area
swaplabel (8)        - print or change the label or UUID of a swap area
swapoff (8)          - enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping
swapon (8)           - enable/disable devices and files for paging and swapping

[zeugma]

$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
$ apropos woman
woman: nothing appropriate.