Searching for packages...

[Jason Voegele]

Stroller said:
>
> What is the Ubuntu equivalent of `emerge --search` (or of `esearch`,
> the indexed search tool), please?
> I find that I can search in `dselect` using the "/" key, but this
> doesn't show all the matches in one place - eg qt-dev-tools are not
> very near libqt3-dev, making results hard to review.

Although you can use apt-cache or Synaptic to search for packages,
aptitude has a MUCH more flexible search function.

To search for a package whose name matches a given pattern:

    aptitude search sshd

To search for a package whose description matches a given pattern:

    aptitude search ~dsshd

Read /usr/share/doc/aptitude/README for complete documentation of
aptitude's search functionality.

-- 
Jason Voegele
"There is an essential core at the center of each man and woman that
remains unaltered no matter how life's externals may be transformed
or recombined. But it's smaller than we think."
    -- Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Long Sun