What does the man -k command display?
- All man pages in sequence with the given name in all chapters.
- The man pages with a word in the name.
- The manual page for the given topic.
- A list of the man pages discussing the subject.
from man man
lol!
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.
-K Search for the specified string in all man pages. Warning: this is probably very slow! It helps to specify a section. (Just to give a rough idea, on my machine this takes about a minute per 500 man pages.)
man man
- there's even more meta-man! (see comment on question)
Oct 1, 2014 at 15:27
From http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/man.1.html
"When you search for manpages with man's -k switch, the entire NAME line of every manpage is searched and the results (if any) are displayed."
See http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/man.1.html for details.
man -k '\bman\b'
to find the man page ofman
! Now you know where to look:man man
!