Bug#960802: apt: Feature Request: filter regexes from search using -'[regex]'

[Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>]

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 02:40:12PM -0500, chris wrote:
> Package: apt
> Version: 2.0.2ubuntu0.1
> Severity: wishlist
> 
>    * I ran 'apt search cura' to look for the package Cura. The command returned several irrelevant packages whose name begins with 'python-'.
>    * I ran 'apt search cura -"python"' to see if it would exclude packages whose name contains "python".
>    * The command returned an error. I also looked through the apt manpage to see if an equivalent function exists, and I didn't see one.
>    * It would be nice to have the ability to filter out certain strings such as "python" or "lib" when searching for packages. This would cut out a lot of scrolling.
> 

I'm against introducing more ad-hoc syntax. We're working on patterns which can query all sorts of things,
and has logic combinators, see apt-patterns(7). That said, description searching, and use in search are not
available yet.

There are also various issues with syntax like that:

* - starts a short option (which is why install uses foo- for removal)
* how do I differentiate the regex "-apt" from "not" the regex "apt"


Patterns solve this, but might be a bit more inconvenient

apt search "~ncura !~npython" for searching names
- short for '?and(?name(cura),?not(?name(python))'

Neither solution is intuitive, but at least people know the patterns from
aptitude already :)

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