Index Question

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2014-01-08 at 23:23 +0000, kbun at xpresso.seaslug.org wrote:
> I don't recall if it was apt/apt-get/aptitude/other, but
> way back, (during the great dinosaur die off), someone
> posted to the list, a command that generated a _long_
> index listing of filenames available for download, along
> with a one line discription of what the program was or
> what it did.
> 
> Anyone happen to recall, or know what that command was/is?

apt-cache should be able to do it, but I'm not aware how to get an
output of _all_ packages, lexically sorted by package names.

# apt-cache search [a-z]

This seems to show all packages, lexically sorted by package names, but
without description:

# aptitude -F "%p" search "?not(?installed)"

man pages, trial and error and search engines are your friends ;)