On 10.01.20 11:10, Alessandro Vesely via Dng wrote:
> On Fri 10/Jan/2020 01:35:55 +0100 Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > On 09.01.20 17:44, Alessandro Vesely via Dng wrote:
> >>
> >> Synaptic is convenient as it allows to search for keywords, e.g. "pdf", and
> >> choose a package that does the task at hand. Google does the same, but is not
> >> version specific.
> >
> > For many years I have found "apt-cache search <sometext>", piped to more
> > or grep for further refining, eminently satisfactory. Yes, "pdf" is a
> > sufficiently vague query to elicit a surfeit of matches, but when I look
> > for e.g. "avr", the matchlist is very concise.
>
>
> apt-cache, yes! That works very well. If I pipe through less rather than more
> I can restrict the output by, say, '&view', and examine a package by issuing
> '!apt-cache show package| less'...

Ah, thank you for the trade. The less efficient habit of using more and
grep has remained with me for four decades or more, from before the days
of SunOS 4.1.3. Less was apparently around even then, but I've never
looked at its manpage before your hint. ... It's harder to change habits
now, though.

Erik