Re: Aptitude Advanced Searching

[Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 11:04:00AM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> was heard to say:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 07:04:48AM -0400, Michael Pobega wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 12:03:20AM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > > On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 11:39:03PM -0400, Michael Pobega wrote:
>  >
> > > > Also, how do I search for descriptions with multiple words? "~dsuper
> > > > nintendo" doesn't seem to work, and neither does "~dsuper" "~dnintendo".
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Try ~dsuper~dnintendo
> > > 
> > 
> > That worked perfectly too. Thanks for the help!
> > 
> > I personally think this belongs in the notes for Aptitude, who do I
> > contact about trying to get that added to the notes?
> 
> File a wish-list bug against the package aptitude-doc-en.

  The two relevant documentation sections are:

  (in the user's manual)

	<varlistentry>
	  <term>
	    <cmdsynopsis>
	      <command>aptitude</command>
	      <arg choice='plain'>search</arg>
	      <arg
choice='plain'><replaceable>pattern1</replaceable></arg>
	      <arg
rep='repeat'><replaceable>pattern2</replaceable></arg>
	    </cmdsynopsis>
	  </term>

	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      This command searches for packages whose name contains
	      any of the given <replaceable>pattern</replaceable>s,
	      printing the result to the terminal.  In addition to
	      just being a string of text, each
	      <replaceable>pattern</replaceable> can be a search
	      pattern as described in <xref
	      linkend='secSearchPatterns'/>.
	      <footnote>
		<para>
		  In fact, the same is true of the commands that take
		  packages as arguments, such as
		  <literal>install</literal> or
		  <literal>show</literal>.
		</para>
	      </footnote>
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>

  (in the manpage)

      <varlistentry>
	<term><literal>search</literal></term>

	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Searches for packages matching one of the patterns
	    supplied on the command line.  All packages which
	    match any of the given patterns will be displayed; for
	    instance, <quote><literal>aptitude search
	    '~N'</literal></quote> will list all <quote>new</quote>
packages.  For more information on
	    search patterns, see the section <quote><link
	    linkend='secSearchPatterns'>Search
	    Patterns</link></quote> in the &aptitude; reference
	    manual.
	  </para>

  Both of those state pretty clearly that matches of any terms will be
displayed, and it seems to me that it would be difficult to make it more
prominent without an <emphasis> tag or somesuch (emphasis doesn't render
in the README atm anyway).  I'm open to suggestions, though.

  I actually would rather require matches on all patterns for
consistency with the curses UI, but this has been in the wild long
enough that I think preserving backwards compatibility for current users
is more important.

  Daniel