Re: 'apt-cache search' question

[Faheem Mitha <faheem@email.unc.edu>]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 22:04:40 -0500, ronin2@bellatlantic.net
<ronin2@bellatlantic.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Mar 2003 02:20:21 +0000 (UTC)
> Faheem Mitha <faheem@email.unc.edu> wrote:
> 
>> > the gimp. Using 'apt-cache search gimp gif' did not return the
>> > correct answer. The man page for apt-cache says:
>> > 
>> > search search  performs  a  full  text  search on all available
>> > package
>> > 	  files for the regex pattern given. It searchs the package 
>> > 	  names and  the  descriptions for an occurance of the string
>> > 	  and 
> 
> I'm pretty sure it already does what the man page says it does. When I
> use apt-cache search sometimes I get a whole lot of stuff that isn't
> what I'm looking for, because of the package description search.
> 
> I think the problem is that in the command line
>  apt-cache search gimp gif
> 
> the phrase "gimp gif" is not a regular expression. What happened here is
> that apt-cache searched for the pattern "gimp" and stopped after it saw
> the space. It didn't even see "gif".

Hmm. Interesting theory. This is not what apt-cache search actually
does, though. This is also not what the man page says it does.

> Regular expressions is a highly detailed technical topic, which I
> couldn't begin to describe in a mail message. If you can find the
> O'Reilly book "Mastering Regular Expressions" you'll find it to be 
> excellent. I don't know any others, but that doesn't mean they don't
> exist.
> 
> Don't embarrass yourselves by filing a bug on this. :)

I'm happy to embarrass myself. :-) So, is anyone going to file a bug,
or shall I?

                                               Faheem.