Finding executable files

[Pierre Frenkiel]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Leonard Chatagnier wrote:

> Ok. I couldn't get wajig whichpkg esmtp to output what apt-cache search
> esmtp did. However, that's because they are doing different things. The
> search command is looking for any path that has the characters esmtp
> in it and whichpkg is *looking for any package which has the file esmtp
> in it* which is totally different outputs. I think whichpkg's output of
> nothing shown is correct as there is no package which contains the file
> esmtp except the file itself.  Esmtp is the file and no other package
> contains the file esmtp within it.

Hi Leonard,
   it seems you are wrong:
   the package esmtp contains a file /usr/bin/esmtp ...

    an other example:
      ==> wajig whichpkg gnuclient.xemacs21

    gives nothing, neither in INSTALLED (package xemacs21-bin is not installed), nor in AVAILABLE

      ==> apt-file search gnuclient.xemacs21
    gives:
      xemacs21-bin: /usr/bin/gnuclient.xemacs21
      xemacs21-bin: /usr/share/man/man1/gnuclient.xemacs21.1.gz

    So, wajig shows ONLY the installed packages, and apt-file both installed AND available,
    which makes a big difference! In addition, you don't have to know the exact name. With

      ==> apt-file search xemacs

    you get everything and more :)