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sorin
Asked: 2010-07-03 01:21:35 +0800 CST

How do I make a wildcard package search using apt-get?

  • 772

With yum it was simple: yum list *xxx* but this does not work with apt-get.

How can I do a search like this?

Also, how do I see what package provides a specific command?

ubuntu debian apt

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you wish to search a specific string only in package names, you can do:

    apt-cache search --names-only 'xxx'

    This will return anything that contains 'xxx' in their package name.

    You can also use regular expressions:

    apt-cache search --names-only 'php5$'

    This will return any package with their name ending in php5.

    Regular expressions can also be used without the --names-only. See apt-cache(8) man page.

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  2. An alternative is "apt-cache search"

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  3. First Question: use dselect or aptitude to see/search all available packagesm, their both curses frontends to apt-get and/or dpkg

    Second Question: dpkg -S <COMMAND>

    It would be wise to include the whole path in your dpkg search (e.g. /bin/ls, not just ls).

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  4. Yet another alternative is axi-cache (in the apt-xapian-index package). It uses the xapian search engine to search through the apt archives.

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  5. Put the search query in a quotes and then use regex. For install to search whatever version of php-curl, I use; 

    sudo apt-cache search "php.*curl"

    which returns; 

    php5-curl - CURL module for php5
php-http-request2 - Provides an easy way to perform HTTP requests
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