I replied to Paul privately but posting it publicly here for others: On Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 4:40 PM Paul Goyette <[email protected]> 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. > 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
