portsearch: how to display search results

[Michael C. Shultz]

On Thursday 22 December 2005 08:40, Vasil Dimov wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am working on a tool that will allow easy (portsearch -f something)
> and fast (less than a few seconds) to search for ports that install
> some file.
>
> I see two options for displaying the results:
>
> 1) the simple way
> Show each file that matches a given pattern with some information for
> the port that would install it. This means that one port may be shown
> more than once, which I find really irritating.
>
> Here is an example output when searching for files that match the
> regular expression bin/f.*
>
> Port: portabc
> File: bin/f1
>
> Port: portabc
> File: bin/f2
>
> Port: portxyz
> File: bin/f3
>
>
> 2) group files by port
> Show ports that have at least one file matching a given pattern with all
> the matching files they install
>
> Output from the same search criteria:
>
> Port: portabc
> File(s): bin/f1, bin/f2
>
> Port: portxyz
> File(s): bin/f3
>
>
> My research shows that Debian's ``apt-file search'' and Fedora's
> ``yum provides'' use "the simple way" and display one package more
> than once. But 2) seems to me to be the prettier output.
>
> What do you think?

I prefer the files grouped by port, do you have a working example yet? I'd
like to give it a test run.

-Mike