On 2009-12-30 03:32 (-0600), Stan Hoeppner wrote:

> I started using aptitude after upgrading from Etch to Lenny. I now use
> it exclusively instead of apt-*. It's much more powerful and user
> friendly, and the package search function returns more relevant and
> limited results. For instance
>
> :/$ aptitude search postf
> :/$ apt-cache search postf
>
> aptitude only returns packages whose name contains "postf"

Obviously the relevance depends on your search terms - and aptitude has
more advanced search engine. For example, with

aptitude search '~dpostf'
aptitude search '?description(postf)'

you can search regexp "postf" from packages' descriptions. With

aptitude search '~Pmail-transport-agent'
aptitude search '?provides(mail-transport-agent)'

you can list packages which "Provides" meta package
mail-transport-agent.

See "Table 2.1" in /usr/share/aptitude/README file.


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