How can apropos find emacs? 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)

`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