Re: question

[richard@elmail.co.uk (Richard Kettlewell)]

tomk@westgac3.dragon.com writes:

>Is there a way to view the contents of a *.deb package prior to
>installing it?  The reason for the question is: I needed to uuencode
>a file and "uuencode" was not to be found. I assume that it is in one
>of the *.deb packages which I haven't installed yet. In case anyone
>is wondering, I am not real familar with LINUX and am installing it a
>section at a time.

sfere:richard$ dpkg --contents ~ftp/pub/debian/binary/misc/sharutils-4.1-5.deb 
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/doc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/doc/copyright/
-rw-r--r-- root/root       961 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/doc/copyright/shar
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     24580 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/shar
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     12292 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/unshar
-rwxr-xr-x root/root      8196 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/uuencode
-rwxr-xr-x root/root      8196 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/uudecode
-rwxr-xr-x root/root      8196 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/bin/ansi2knr
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man1/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      9479 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man1/shar.1
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2554 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man1/unshar.1
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3421 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man1/uuencode.1
-rw-r--r-- root/root       910 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man1/ansi2knr.1
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man5/
-rw-r--r-- root/root      3660 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/man/man5/uuencode.5
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/info/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root      7254 Jun  4 05:09 1995 usr/info/sharutils.info.gz
sfere:richard$ 

IIRC there's a ``Contents'' file on the ftp site which you can grep...

ttfn/rjk