On Mon, 13 Oct 2025, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: > On 10/13/25 10:07, [email protected] wrote: >> On Mon, 13 Oct 2025, Greg Wooledge wrote: >> >>> On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 12:43:13 +0000, [email protected] wrote: >>>> apt list ~e^science >>>> >>>> how can i see the details of what is being searched and how >>> >>> man apt-patterns >>> >>> ?source-package(REGEX), ~eREGEX >>> Selects versions where the source package name matches the >>> specified >>> regular expression. >>> >>> man 7 regex >>> >>> '^' (matching the null string at the beginning of a line) >>> >> >> >> i've read that several times >> i don't see anything that tells me the details of how apt is performing the >> search > > I guess you'll need to look at the source code for the exact answer. > > But I'd guess it tries to matches the supplied regexp to the source > package name field (one of the fields of each package, though for some > reason not reported by apt show <package>), and reports the ones that match.
i've read man apt.conf and tried many of the debug options i guess i just haven't found the right combination
