Specifying the Search Query

By default, the search query is a series of terms to be matched exactly except for case. Use the -I option to specify a case-sensitive search.

You can use ? and * wildcards in query terms. You can use single or double quotation marks to search for phrases. Be sure to take your shell into account when you use wildcards or quotation marks.

You can specify more than one query term. By default, multiple terms are joined with AND. You can explicitly join two terms with OR.

Search queries can be expressed in the following structured form:

package:action:index:token

package: The name of the package to search or a pattern that might match multiple packages.
action: The name of an action listed in the Actions section in the pkg(7) man page.
index: Usually selects an attribute of action as listed in the Actions section of the pkg(7) man page. See below for more information.
token: The value of index or a pattern that might match the value of index.

Missing fields are implicitly wildcarded. The token string can be explicitly wildcarded. Names of actions and indexes cannot be explicitly wildcarded.

The index is not necessarily the same as the name of an action attribute. For example, the index for the user action is name, while the name of that attribute is username.

Not all action attributes are searchable. For example, mode is an attribute of the file action, but mode is not a valid value for index.

The following example shows one way to find all possible indexes for an action:

$ pkg search :user::

This command shows that the only searchable attribute of a user action is name.

Some values of index are values derived from other attributes. For example, index can be basename, which is the last component of the path attribute of a file or dir action. Examples of useful values for index include basename and path for file and dir actions, the dependency type (require or group, for example) for depend actions, and driver_name and alias for driver actions.

The index can also be a special pseudo attribute name such as action.key (the key attribute of the action) or pkg.name. See the pkg(1) man page for a complete list.

The value of token is compared with the value of the attribute named by index. For example, in the following partial driver action, alias is an attribute name that could be specified for index, and pci14e* could be specified for token.

driver alias=pci14e4,1000 alias=pci14e4,1200 alias=pci14e4,1203

By default, results are displayed for all matching actions, which can yield multiple lines of results for one package. Use the -p option to list each matching package only once.

$ pkg search -Hpo pkg.name driver:alias:pci14e\*
driver/network/ethernet/bge
driver/network/ethernet/bnx
driver/network/ethernet/bnxe

The syntax of a set action is slightly different. The two attributes of a set action are name and value. In this case, the value of index is the value of a name attribute, and the value of token is compared with the value of the matching value attribute. The following example shows a set action for a driver package:

set name=pkg.summary value="QLogic 57xxx 10/20GbE NIC Driver"

The following example specifies *driver* for package name, pkg.summary for index, and qlogic for token. The set action is implied because the pkg.summary attribute only applies to a set action. The search.match and pkg.name column specifiers are pseudo attributes. See the pkg(1) man page.

$ pkg search -o search.match,pkg.name \*driver\*::pkg.summary:qlogic
SEARCH.MATCH                                           PKG.NAME
QLogic 570x/571x Gigabit Ethernet Driver               driver/network/ethernet/bnx
QLogic 57xxx 10/20GbE NIC Driver                       driver/network/ethernet/bnxe
QLogic ISP Fibre Channel device storage and NIC driver driver/fc/qlc
QLogic P3+ 10GbE NIC Driver                            driver/network/ethernet/qlcnic

The following command gives the same result as the preceding command:

$ pkg search -o search.match,pkg.name pkg.summary:'qlogic * driver'

Some well-defined values of set action name attributes include pkg.fmri, info.classification, pkg.description, and pkg.summary. See Set Actions in the pkg(7) man page.

By default, matches are displayed only for currently installed or newer package versions. Use the -f option to display all matched versions.