Re: Apropos commands and regexps

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    I think giving the apropos commands a keyword based interface is a
    good way to accomplish (a), and having an specific apropos-keywords
    command breaks (b).

Are you suggesting all apropos commands should work by keywords
instead of by regexps?

    Your "all permutations" seems useful -- but I wonder whether it is
    overkill...

    So my idea of just searching for any entry matching at least two keywords
    will find all the entries found by searching for all combinations - and
    it may find some entries the user didn't think about...

What exactly is the difference between these two alternatives?
That isn't clear to me.

    The obvious problem restricting this to complete words is how to make
    e.g. "list process" match "list-processes".

That is a good point.  We want the specified keywords to match
subsets of words in the command name.

    I wonder if the `apropos keyword' command being discussed could maintain
    a list of common `equivalents', and try substituting some if the
    original apropos doesn't return anything useful (or maybe even if
    returns only a few matches).

That is a natural extension.

Looking for an equivalent in this list should work by substring match
too.  And if an equivalent is found, searching for it in command names
or elsewhere should also use substring match.