// vim: set et sw=4 ts=8 ft=asciidoc tw=80:
port-search(1)
==============

NAME
----
port-search - Search for a port using keywords

SYNOPSIS
--------
[cmdsynopsis]
*port* [*-dq*] *search*
     [--case-sensitive] [--line] [--exact|--glob|--regex] [--'field' ...]
     'keyword' ...

DESCRIPTION
-----------
*port search* helps you find ports by partial matches of the name or description
(or other fields, depending on the given options). It is the tool of choice if
you are looking for software in MacPorts.

*search* works by searching for your given keyword(s) in a set of fields of all
available ports. By default, a port's name and short description are searched,
as if you had specified both *--name* and *--description*. See *OPTIONS* for
possible values for 'field'.

Note that you can specify multiple fields to be searched. A port will be printed
when any of the fields matches your keyword(s). If you specify multiple
keywords, *search* will run multiple separate searches, one for each given
keyword.

OPTIONS
-------

Search behavior
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*--case-sensitive*::
    Do not ignore case when searching for the given keyword.

*--exact*::
    Search for the given string exactly. Disables *--glob* (the default) and
    *--regex*.

*--glob*::
    Treat the keyword(s) as wildcard (i.e., expand '\*', '?' and '[sets]'). This
    is the default. See the *string match* section of man:string[n] for
    a detailed syntax description.

*--regex*::
    Treat the given string as a Tcl regular expression. See man:re_syntax[n] for
    a description of Tcl regular expressions.

Output behavior
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*--line*::
    Print one match per line, where a line consists of name, version, categories
    and short description.

See also *-q* in the *GLOBAL OPTIONS* section below.

Field selection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*--category*, *--categories*::
    Search the category. You can use this to list all ports in a given category.
    For example, *port search --category haskell* will print all Haskell ports
    in MacPorts. If you don't need the description it's usually faster to use
    the pseudo-portname selector *category:haskell* with man:port-echo[1] (i.e.,
    *port echo category:haskell*) instead. See man:port[1] for more information
    on pseudo-port selectors.

*--depends*, *--depends_build*, *--depends_extract*, *--depends_fetch*, *--depends_lib*, *--depends_patch*, *--depends_run*, *--depends_test*::
    Search for ports that depend on the port given as keyword. *--depends* is an
    alias for all other *--depends_* options combined. Note that only
    dependencies present in default variants will be found by this search. As
    with *--category*, there also are pseudo-portname selectors available for
    dependencies.

*--description*, *--long_description*::
    Test the search string against ports' descriptions.

*--homepage*::
    Search for the keyword(s) in the homepage property.

*--maintainer*, *--maintainers*::
    Search for ports maintained by a specific maintainer. Note that there also
    is a pseudo-portname selector available for maintainer addresses. See
    man:port[1] for more information.

*--name*::
    Search in ports' names. Since this is the default (together with
    *--description*), this flag is only useful when you to search 'only' in the
    name, but not the description.

*--portdir*::
    Test the search string against the path of the directory that contains the
    port.

*--variant*, *--variants*::
    Search for variant names.

include::global-flags.txt[]

*-q*::
    Only print the name of the port that matched your query. Print one match per
    line.

EFFICIENT SEARCHING
-------------------
The output of *search* can be overwhelming and confusing, especially with
a large number of results. Here are a few tips to improve your search efficiency
with MacPorts.

Suppose you are looking for PHP in MacPorts. You might start with
----
$> port search php
----
and notice your query produces a lot of output. In fact, at the time of writing
this, this search produces 763 matches. By default, *search* searches both name
and description of a port. While we're looking for PHP, we can reduce the number
of hits by using the *--name* flag. Furthermore, we only want ports whose name
starts with “php”, so we add the *--glob* flag (actually, we could leave it out
because it is the default) and modify the search term to *php**. Note that the
asterisk needs to be escaped or quoted to prevent the shell from interpreting
it:
----
$> port search --name --glob 'php*'
----
Since that still produces 689 results, we can activate compressed output using
the *--line* flag
----
$> port search --line --name --glob 'php*'
----
Scrolling over the output, we see a large number of PHP modules starting with
php<version>-<modulename>. That tells us the main PHP ports might be named
php<version>. Using regex we can further narrow down the results:
----
$> port search --line --name --regex '^php\d+$'
----

Note it is not always necessary to drill down to reduce the amount of output.
For example, if you're looking for *rrdtool*, a popular system to store and
graph time-series data, the simple approach works well, with only 12 ports being
returned:
----
$> port search rrd
----


SEE ALSO
--------
man:port[1], man:string[n], man:re_syntax[n], man:port-install[1]

AUTHORS
-------
 (C) 2014 The MacPorts Project
 Clemens Lang <cal@macports.org>
