title: how to find what libraries are installed/available on a machine for C or CPP?
body: <p>this is not a outright tech question but i wanted to know if there is a easier way to find what all libraries are present in a system for a particular language and its facilities .... something like a man page would be great , but to look for info you got to know what exist there first. (3rd party libraries for example....)</p>
  
  <p>my way : for C or CPP - i know if there is a compiler like gcc or g++ all the standard libraries that are installed as part of the compiler itself so i can simply look into the section 2 - 3 of the manual , but those are standard libraries , you can also read about them as part of a book for C and CPP . </p>
  
  <p>What i was really interested in was to find a way to discover libraries i dont know off and try and learn about them .
  like 3rd party libraries like boost  could/might be found in places like /usr/bin ...  so i was doing a find for libXXX.a or a .so file , then doing google to find what it is and where and how i can use it ....... but this is feels stupid  :(</p>
  
  <p>there must be a easier way to find things ?</p>
  
  <p>PS : i am not owner of the machine so i dont do installations myself , think of a Work/University server .... lot of guys access that. , by the way the OS is Solaris 9</p>