bug#79907: Minor minor bug: apropos does not suggest touch

On 28/11/2025 11:21, Thomas Webbers wrote:
> Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this.
> 
> tldr; I suggest adding the word "create" to the description of touch in the
> man page such that "apropos file | grep create" can suggest touch.
> 
> Longer explanation:
> 
> The command: "apropos file | grep create" Does not suggest the "touch"
> command As stated on: man apropos
> https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/apropos.1.html
> 
>         apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
> 
> 
> Meaning it does not go beyond the description.
> Touch does mention that leaving out the -c OPTION will result in no files
> being created if
> they don't exist hence it can be inferred that using touch
> without -c will result in files being created.
> 
> However despite touch being frequently used for file creation touch man
> page does not use the word "create"
> 
> Hence apropos is unable to suggest the most used file creation
> method (that truthfully is a by product of in-built functionality rather
> than intend of the function)
> 
> 
> Therefore I would suggest changing the description of the man page of touch
> slightly
> to include the word create or even an addition that this utility is often
> used to create files as well.


I agree. creating a file is core functionality for touch(1).
I've pushed a change to state that in the summary,
so that something like the following can be used to search:

   apropos -s1 -r create.*file

Marking this as done.

cheers,
Padraig