# How can I search for help of a function on all Julia packages simultaneously?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [December 6, 2018, 7:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393 "2018-12-06T19:57:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Juan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/juan/32/7657_2.png) [@Juan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Juan)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 7:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/1 "2018-12-06T19:57:45Z")

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Is there any way to find the help about a function if I don’t if know what package contains the function?  
I mean searching on Julia base and all packages altogether? Kind of centralized help.

Sometimes I try to study Julia code found on the Internet but I can’t find information about some function by searching on `https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/` because the command belongs to a package, I don’t know which one but I need to look at its specific doc site.

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**Author:** ![fredrikekre](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/fredrikekre/32/1688_2.png) [@fredrikekre](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/fredrikekre)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/2 "2018-12-06T22:10:06Z")

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No, but would be good to have. Regular search engines should work pretty well, and leads you to the correct package 9/10 times.

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**Author:** ![y4lu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/47e85d/32.png) [@y4lu](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/y4lu)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2018, 1:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/3 "2018-12-07T01:07:20Z")

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`apropos("findthis")` can be pretty handy for things in the standard library

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**Author:** ![Juan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/juan/32/7657_2.png) [@Juan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Juan)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2018, 5:38pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/4 "2018-12-07T17:38:35Z")

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I’ve tried but it seems it only finds information on the packages you already have installed.

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**Author:** ![StefanKarpinski](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stefankarpinski/32/24_2.png) [@StefanKarpinski](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/StefanKarpinski)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2018, 7:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/5 "2018-12-07T19:22:23Z")

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There is no centralized place you can search all packages. We do, however, have a tentative plan to create such a service for free for the open source Julia ecosystem.

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**Author:** ![jandehaan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jandehaan/32/6805_2.png) [@jandehaan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jandehaan)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2018, 7:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-can-i-search-for-help-of-a-function-on-all-julia-packages-simultaneously/18393/6 "2018-12-07T19:37:47Z")

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When I don’t know which package in the Julia Standard Library contains a particular function, I go to the Julia [stdlib source code page](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/stdlib) on GitHub and search “this repository” for that function. In most cases the first search results point to the package that contains the function.