On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 02:40:12PM -0500, chris wrote: > Package: apt > Version: 2.0.2ubuntu0.1 > Severity: wishlist > > * I ran 'apt search cura' to look for the package Cura. The command > returned several irrelevant packages whose name begins with 'python-'. > * I ran 'apt search cura -"python"' to see if it would exclude packages > whose name contains "python". > * The command returned an error. I also looked through the apt manpage to > see if an equivalent function exists, and I didn't see one. > * It would be nice to have the ability to filter out certain strings such > as "python" or "lib" when searching for packages. This would cut out a lot of > scrolling. >
I'm against introducing more ad-hoc syntax. We're working on patterns which can query all sorts of things, and has logic combinators, see apt-patterns(7). That said, description searching, and use in search are not available yet. There are also various issues with syntax like that: * - starts a short option (which is why install uses foo- for removal) * how do I differentiate the regex "-apt" from "not" the regex "apt" Patterns solve this, but might be a bit more inconvenient apt search "~ncura !~npython" for searching names - short for '?and(?name(cura),?not(?name(python))' Neither solution is intuitive, but at least people know the patterns from aptitude already :) -- debian developer - deb.li/jak | jak-linux.org - free software dev ubuntu core developer i speak de, en
