Re: scriptable way to list packages that are not installed

[john doe <johndoe65534@mail.com>]

On 1/14/2018 4:52 AM, Vasyl Vavrychuk wrote:
> I would like to list not installed packages in my script. Currently I do
>
>      dpkg-query -W -f='${db:Status-Abbrev}${binary:Package}\n'
> $PACKAGES | grep -v "^ii" | awk '{print $2}'

As an aside; you don't need grep in this command:

$ <CMD> | awk '!/^ii/{print $2}'

> Problem is that dpkg-query outputs information about no matching
> packages in stderr in a not suitable for scripts way, for example
>
>      dpkg-query -W -f='${db:Status-Abbrev}${binary:Package}\n' git gawk cmake
>      un cmake
>      ii git
>      dpkg-query: no packages found matching gawk
>
> I there any scriptable way to get information about unmatching packages?

You could try to redirect STDERR  to STDOUT:

$ dpkg-query -W -f='${db:Status-Abbrev}${binary:Package}\n' git gawk 
cmake 2>&1 | awk '{print $6}'
git
gawk
cmake

Note that my mailer is folding the command.

--
John Doe