How can apropos find emacs?

Question

Funny thing is, after 25 years of hearing what apropos can do -- 25 years ago I didn't understand what it can do -- yesterday I just found that it is for making suggestions for what tools or command you can use. Such as:

apropos editor

and it will show a list that includes pico and vim. However, I can't find emacs and no matter what I used for the keyboard, emacs won't show. Is there a way to actually find it?

(I am using Ubuntu 15.10)

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 15 '15 at 11:52

apropos just searches short descriptions and names within the manual page. When you open a manual page, for example man apropos:

NAME
       apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
       └──┬──┘   └─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┘
        name                   short description

apropos searches for a keyword within this part, that each manual page has.

The manual page of emacs just don't mention the word editor in its short description:

$ man emacs
[...]
NAME
       emacs - GNU project Emacs

maybe it is the style of Richard Stallman at that time – nonopolarity Dec 15 '15 at 13:19 — nonopolarity, Dec 15 '15 at 13:19

How can apropos find emacs?

1 Answers1