Re: Strange apropos(1) behavior?

[Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 6:43 PM Abhinav Upadhyay
<er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> I replied to Paul privately but posting it publicly here for others:
>
> On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 4:40 PM Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 19 Apr 2019, Paul Goyette wrote:
> >
> > > Should it be possible to use both the -l (legacy mode) option and specify a
> > > specific section -[1-9] ?
> > >
> > > # apropos -l -8 specific
> > > apropos: no such table: mandb
> > > apropos: No relevant results obtained.
> > > Please make sure that you spelled all the terms correctly or try using
> > > different keywords.
>
> This is a bug and I am looking into it.

I just committed a fix for it in revision 1.43 of apropos-utils.c. It
was a memory corruption issue (freeing invalid memory).
Please verify that it works for you if you get a chance. I did verify though.

>
> > And another anomaly:
> >
> > # apropos -p specific
> > apropos: Cannot allocate 140187716927593 bytes: Cannot allocate memory
> This was fixed in revision 1.42 of apropos-utils.c, Paul verified that
> it works with that fix.
>
> > And while we're at it, the man page for apropos(1) says that the -p
> > option _defaults_ to using more(1) as the pager, implying that it should
> > be possible to use a different pager.  Yet there is no option to tell
> > apropos to which other pager the output should be piped!
> >
> > And finally, the -P option is documented in the apropos(1) man page as
> > also "Turn on pager formatting".  Is this correct?  Or should one of
> > these two options be a "Turn _off_ pager formatting" ?  :)
> >
>
> Joerg already clarified the usage of these options but I will try to
> improve the wording in the man page.
>
> -
> Abhinav