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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
<!ENTITY % aptent SYSTEM "apt.ent"> %aptent;
<!ENTITY % aptverbatiment SYSTEM "apt-verbatim.ent"> %aptverbatiment;
<!ENTITY % aptvendor SYSTEM "apt-vendor.ent"> %aptvendor;
]>

<refentry>
 <refentryinfo>
   &apt-author.jgunthorpe;
   &apt-author.team;
   &apt-email;
   &apt-product;
   <!-- The last update date -->
   <date>2019-08-15T00:00:00Z</date>
 </refentryinfo>

 <refmeta>
   <refentrytitle>apt-patterns</refentrytitle>
   <manvolnum>7</manvolnum>
   <refmiscinfo class="manual">APT</refmiscinfo>
 </refmeta>

 <!-- Man page title -->
 <refnamediv>
    <refname>apt-patterns</refname>
    <refpurpose>Syntax and semantics of apt search patterns</refpurpose>
 </refnamediv>

 <refsect1><title>Description</title>
   <para>
   Starting with version 2.0, <command>APT</command> provides support for
   patterns, which can be used to query the apt cache for packages.
   </para>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1>
   <title>Syntax</title>
   <variablelist>
   </variablelist>

 </refsect1>

 <refsect1><title>Examples</title>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1><title>Migrating from aptitude</title>
   <para>
   Patterns in apt are heavily inspired by patterns in aptitude, but with some tweaks:
   </para>
   <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
         <para>Only long forms &mdash; the ones starting with ? &mdash; are supported</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
         <para>
            Syntax is uniform: If there is an opening parenthesis after a term, it is always assumed to be the beginning of an argument list.
         </para>
         <para>
            In aptitude, a syntactic form <code>"?foo(bar)"</code> could mean <code>"?and(?foo,bar)"</code> if foo does not take an argument. In APT, this will cause an error.
         </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
         <para>Not all patterns are supported.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
         <para>Some additional patterns are available, for example, for finding gstreamer codecs.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
         <para>Escaping terms with <code>~</code> is not supported.</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
         <para>A trailing comma is allowed in argument lists</para>
      </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
 </refsect1>

 <refsect1><title>See Also</title>
   <para>
   &apt-get;, &apt;
   </para>
 </refsect1>

 &manbugs;
 &manauthor;
</refentry>