On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 16:44:06 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 11:23:58AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote: > > <https://manpages.debian.org/bookworm/aptitude/aptitude.8.en.html> > > includes this paragraph (buried deep, searching for ~ eventually gets > > to it): > > > > This command accepts package names or patterns as arguments. If > > the string contains a tilde character (“~”) or a question mark > > (“?”), it will be treated as a search pattern and every package > > matching the pattern will be considered (see the section “Search > > Patterns” in the aptitude reference manual). > > > > I think it's just searching for a status matching ?o - so that matches > "obsolete", for example. > > Trying it with '~i' gives you everything that is i[nstalled], by comparison. > That's a long list, going down to zstd. > > aptitude list -h gives you more help detail.
The tilde patterns are definitely not in the output of "aptitude list -h". I just installed it to try it to find out. A google search for "aptitude reference manual" brings me to <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/> which is entitled "aptitude user's manual". It has a "Search patterns" section (at <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04.en.html>) which might or might not be what the man page was talking about. Following the pages, <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s02.en.html> is the first place the tilde is mentioned. It has a link to <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s05.en.html#tableSearchTermQuickGuide> which FINALLY appears to document the feature. Since the table is practically at the top of the page, we don't really need the anchor reference, so my final answer is: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s04s05.en.html That easily typed and easily memorized link appears to be what we wanted to see when we typed the overly long and convoluted "man apt".
