[solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

shallpion · 2013-09-22 04:51:31

Hi. Thanks for reading. I am looking for a command with the following function:

1. It searches only the pacakge name, not the description.
2. However, when a package's name matches the search pattern, it shows the description of this package as well.

After searching in the forum, now I am using something like:

pacman -Ss test_string | grep --color=always -B1 -v '^ ' | less -R

It works nicely in terms of my two requirements. However, I could not get the color output (I have pacman color option) from pacaman even if I used less.

On the contrary, the following command has normal color output

ls --color | grep test_string | less -R

Did I do anything wrong?

Thanks...

Last edited by shallpion (2013-09-22 04:55:33)

shallpion · 2013-09-22 04:56:21

I just recall that I have to use --color=always for pacman as well...

Mr.Elendig · 2013-09-22 12:12:50

shallpion wrote:

Did I do anything wrong?

Yes, you are not using expac.

expac -S '%r/%n\n    %d' python
extra/python
    Next generation of the python high-level scripting language
community/pypy3
    A Python3 implementation written in Python, JIT enabled

Note that it will match provides as well as the package name.

Sidenote: kittypack will 'soon' have this feature too, but it uses https://archlinux.org/packages so it is independent of the status of your sync db.

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2013-09-22 12:21:36)

shallpion · 2013-09-22 23:25:47

Mr.Elendig wrote:

shallpion wrote:
Did I do anything wrong?
Yes, you are not using expac.
expac -S '%r/%n\n    %d' python
extra/python
    Next generation of the python high-level scripting language
community/pypy3
    A Python3 implementation written in Python, JIT enabled
Note that it will match provides as well as the package name.
Sidenote: kittypack will 'soon' have this feature too, but it uses https://archlinux.org/packages so it is independent of the status of your sync db.

Sorry I am confused... I know expac but it doesn't look like the function I was looking for... I wanted to search those packages whose *name* contains a string. For example the pypy3 is not what I wanted since it only has "python" in its description...

Mr.Elendig · 2013-09-23 11:07:19

shallpion wrote:

Sorry I am confused... I know expac but it doesn't look like the function I was looking for... I wanted to search those packages whose *name* contains a string. For example the pypy3 is not what I wanted since it only has "python" in its description...

It doesn't search the description, as I said it will also search the 'provides' field. (which pacman -S also does)

Trilby · 2013-09-23 11:19:12

I'm confused whether this is solved or not. OP Mr E's answer seems to come very close, yet you didn't prefer it. But this is marked as solved. The "color=always" pacman parameter solves the color issue, but pacman -Ss searches descriptions too, which is not what you claimed to want.

If you want to seach package names only, you can use something like

pacman -Ss --color=always python | grep -B1 '^[^ ].*python.*'

Last edited by Trilby (2013-09-23 11:19:54)

shallpion · 2013-09-23 17:46:14

Okay I see, thanks for your (both Mr E and Trilby) replies. I was originally looking for a solution with color output only and later found that I need --color option, so I marked my own question as solved. So far it seems the grep pipe is the only way to search the package name ONLY, so I will stick to it. Thanks again.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-09-22 04:51:31

[solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#2 2013-09-22 04:56:21

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#3 2013-09-22 12:12:50

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#4 2013-09-22 23:25:47

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#5 2013-09-23 11:07:19

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#6 2013-09-23 11:19:12

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

#7 2013-09-23 17:46:14

Re: [solved]pacman output piped to grep with color result?

Board footer