Note: This tip applies primarily to UNIX platforms (fortunately or unfortunately). The code was run on a Sun Solaris server (SunOS 5.8).
How many times have you wondered what programs installed on your machine will handle content of a given type? There’s an easy utility that does this called apropos.
Suppose you want to find the programs/libraries related to .jpeg. Give the following command:
apache 21> apropos jpegcjpeg cjpeg (1) - compress an image file to a JPEG filedjpeg djpeg (1) - decompress a JPEG file to an image filejpegtran jpegtran (1) - lossless transcoding of JPEG filesrdjpgcom rdjpgcom (1) - display text comments from a JPEG filewrjpgcom wrjpgcom (1) - insert text comments into a JPEG file
As you can see, this returned five programs related to .jpeg. Of course, the output will differ depending on your system.