Re: Potentially undesirable behavior with apropos(1)

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

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 4:05 PM, thilo jeremias <thilo%nispuk.com@localhost> wrote:
> The man page is clear:
>
>      -k      Search man pages for keyword(s), in the same manner as
>              apropos(1).

If you want old apropos, there is -l option or set environment
variable APROPOS and use man -k. :)

> And doing
> -bash-4.3$ man -k re | wc
>     1515   22761  148437
> -bash-4.3$
>
> is meaning less.

It's not meaning less. The first result is re(4), which is probably
what you are looking for. Just 're' as a query is hard to guess for
apropos, it might mean the hardware driver, or regular expression, or
re-initialize, re-sample, re-map etc.,  and that's why you see so many
results. I encourage you to compare `apropos -l re` and `apropos re`
and decide which output is more useful :)
Here is what I see:

$ apropos -n 10 -M re
re (4)    RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8168/8110S/8111 PCI Ethernet adapter driver
FcInitReinitialize (3)    re-initialize library
mremap (2)        re-map a virtual memory address
refuse (3)        Re-implementation of a file system in userspace system
magick (1)        convert between image formats as well as resize an
image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample,
and much more.
convert (1)       convert between image formats as well as resize an
image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample,
and much more.
magick-script (1) scripting language that converts between image
formats as well as resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither,
draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more.
mogrify (1)       resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw
on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more. Mogrify overwrites the
original image file, whereas, convert(1) writes to a different image
file.
chpass (1)        add or change user database information
awi (4)   AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver

$ apropos -n 20 -M -l re #old apropos output
winfo(n) - Return window-related information
ttk::treeview(n) - hierarchical multicolumn data display widget
ttk::sizegrip(n) - Bottom-right corner resize widget
ttk::scale(n) - Create and manipulate a scale widget
ttk::progressbar(n) - Provide progress feedback
ttk::menubutton(n) - Widget that pops down a menu when pressed
ttk::button(n) - Widget that issues a command when pressed
toplevel(n) - Create and manipulate 'toplevel' main and popup window widgets
tk_optionMenu(n) - Create an option menubutton and its menu
tk_messageBox(n) - pops up a message window and waits for user response.
tk_focusNext(n) - Utility procedures for managing the input focus.
tk_dialog(n) - Create modal dialog and wait for response
tk_chooseDirectory(n) - pops up a dialog box for the user to select a directory.
text(n) - Create and manipulate 'text' hypertext editing widgets
spinbox(n) - Create and manipulate 'spinbox' value spinner widgets
send(n) - Execute a command in a different application
scrollbar(n) - Create and manipulate 'scrollbar' scrolling control and
indicator widgets
scale(n) - Create and manipulate 'scale' value-controlled slider widgets
safe::loadTk(n) - Load Tk into a safe interpreter.
radiobutton(n) - Create and manipulate 'radiobutton' pick-one widgets

With the new apropos(1), most of the times you would find the result
you were searching for in the top, there will be some unrelated
results also in the mix, but you can just ignore them. :)

>
> I just wonder how can I search for the cryptic keywords I used to be able to
> find.

Could you give few examples of such keywords where you don't see the
expected result in the top, and it might help me to improve apropos :)

>
> I agree stemming and full text search is a nice feature, but just a feature.
>
> Giving the user the option would be democratic.
> :-)
>
> I just got used to use man -k in the last 25 years, and it would be a
> unexpected change.

It is understandable, you can use `apropos -l` if you preferred the
classic version :)

-
Abhinav