Aptitude Tips

Searching

The default behaviour is to search only package names.

   $ aptitude search regex

is the same as:

   $ aptitude search '~nregex'

This provides the same behaviour as using 'apt-cache search regex', where 'regex' is the regular expression you are searching for.

   $ aptitude search '-dregex|~nregex'

It appears, just searching with '~dregex' actually searches both package names and package descriptions.

~i is used to specify searching of installed packages only. E.g. to search for either 'svn' or 'subversion' in package descriptions:

   $ aptitude search '~i~dsvn|~i~dsubversion'

To search only packages that are not installed:

   $ aptitude search '!~i~dsvn|!~i~dsubversion'

    $ aptitude search '?obsolete'