Re: Learning dpkg/apt

["Martin Bialasinski" <martin@internet-treff.uni-koeln.de>]

On 19-Aug-00, 18:56 (CDT), Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net> wrote: 
> for things like querying (dpkg -s and such) install dlocate it solves
> that problem the Right Way.  (unfortunatly it got removed from potato
> for less then critical bugs)

* "Steve" == Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org> wrote:

Steve> man apt-cache. (Assuming you're using apt-get either directly
Steve> or via dselect, and there is no reason not to!)

apt-cache and dlocate cover quite different areas. dlocate is for dpkg
queries like -L and -S (and more). And it is so damn _fast_.

$ time dpkg  -l \*applet\* > /dev/null

real    0m2.010s
user    0m1.880s
sys     0m0.110s

$ time dlocate -l applet > /dev/null

real    0m0.037s
user    0m0.030s
sys     0m0.010s

$ time apt-cache --names-only search applet > /dev/null

real    0m0.703s
user    0m0.350s
sys     0m0.350s

[These are the times of the second invocation, so memory cache/buffers
are used]

IMHO, it is a must have. Cudos to Craig.

Ciao,
        Martin