APT-FILE(1)															       APT-FILE(1)

NAME

       apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-line interface

SYNOPSIS

       apt-file [ options ] [ action ] [ pattern ]

       apt-file -f [ options ] search [ file ... ]

       apt-file -D [ options ] search [ binary-packet.deb ... ]

DESCRIPTION

       apt-file is a command line tool for searching files in packages for the APT package management system.

       Some actions are required to run the search:

       find   Alias for search.

       list   List  the  contents  of  a package matching the pattern pattern. This action is very close to the dpkg -L command except the package
	      does not need to be installed or fetched.

       purge  remove all Contents-* files from the cache directory.

       search Search in which package a file is included. A list of all packages containing the pattern pattern is returned.

	      apt-file will only search for filenames, not directory names.  This is due to the format of the Contents files it searches.

       show   Alias for list.

       update Resynchronize the package contents from their sources. The lists of the contents of packages are fetched from the location(s) speci-
	      fied  in	/etc/apt/sources.list.	This  command  attempts to fetch the Contents-<ARCH>.gz files from remote sources. For downloading
	      these uses either the curl or wget commands as specified in apt-file.conf.

OPTIONS

	  -a, --architecture architecture
	      Sets architecture to architecture. This option is useful if you search a package for a different architecture from the one installed
	      on your system.  It determines how the $ARCH variable in sources.list is expanded (but it does not influence the search in any other
	      way).

	  -c, --cache cache-directory
	      Sets the cache directory to cache-directory instead of its default. If executed as non-root user, the default  is  $HOME/.cache/apt-
	      file with fall-back to /var/cache/apt/apt-file. The latter is also the default if apt-file is called as root.

	  -d, --cdrom-mount cdrom-mount-point
	      Use cdrom-mount-point instead of apt's.

	  -D, --from-deb
	      Use contents of the given .deb archives(s) as patterns.  Useful for searching for file conflicts with other packages.  Implies -F.

	  -f, --from-file
	      Read patterns from the given file(s), one per line.  Use -f - for stdin.	This is much faster than invoking apt-file many times.

	  -F, --fixed-string
	      Do not expand search pattern with generic characters at pattern's start and end.

	  -i, --ignore-case
	      Ignore case when searching for pattern.

	  -l, --package-only
	      Only display package name; do not display file names.

	  -N, --non-interactive
	      Skip schemes that are listed in the interactive line in apt-file.conf.  This is useful if you want to call 'apt-file update' in cron
	      jobs and skip all schemes that may require user input.

	  -s, --sources-list sources.list
	      Sets the sources.list file to a different value from its default /etc/apt/sources.list.

	  -v, --verbose
	      Run apt-file in verbose mode.

	  -x, --regexp
	      Treat pattern as a (perl) regular expression. See perlreref(1) for details. Without this option, pattern is  treated  as	a  literal
	      string to search for.

	  -y, --dummy
	      Run in dummy mode (no action).

	  -h, --help
	      Display a short help screen.

CONFIGURATION FILE

       The apt-file configuration file can be found in /etc/apt/apt-file.conf.

       A string expansion is done on several values. See the string expansion section.

       destination
	      This variable describes how cached files will be named.

       http | ftp | ssh | rsh | file | cdrom
	      Defines the commands used to fetch files.

   STRING EXPANSION
       A sources.list entry is defined as:

	      deb uri dist component1 component2 ...

       A uri is defined as:

	      proto:/[/][user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]

       <host> replace with the hostname

       <port> replace with the port number

       <uri>  replace with full uri

       <path> replace with full path (relative to / on the host)

       <dist> replace with distribution name

       <comp> replace with component name

       <cache>
	      replace with cache directory

       <dest> replace with destination expanded value.

       <cdrom>
	      replace with cdrom-mount-point.

BUGS

       The cdrom backend has not been tested.

       Non-release lines in sources.list are not handled by apt-file.

       There is only one Contents file per distribution that contains all components (i.e. main, contrib, and non-free). Threrefore, apt-file will
       display search results from all components, even if not all components are included in the sources.list file.

       When a new line has been added to the sources.list and apt-file update has not been run, apt-file does not print a warning message.

       Complex regular expressions that match the leading slash may not work correctly. As a workaround, try to pull  the  leading  slash  to  the
       beginning of the regular expression. For example, use "/(usr/bin/vim|sbin/lvm)" instead of "/usr/bin/vim|/sbin/lvm".

FILES

       /etc/apt/sources.list
	      Locations to fetch package contents from.

       /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
	      Directory with additional sources.list snippets

       /etc/apt/apt-file.conf
	      Configuration file for apt-file.

SEE ALSO

       auto-apt(1), apt-cache(8), apt-cdrom(8), dpkg(8), dselect(8), sources.list(5), apt.conf(5), apt_preferences(5).

       The APT users guide in /usr/share/doc/apt/

AUTHOR

       apt-file was written by Sebastien J. Gross <sjg@debian.org>.

								     May 2003							       APT-FILE(1)