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📘 NAME

apt-patterns — Syntax and semantics of apt search patterns

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
🔍 Search by package name	apt list '?name(REGEX)'	Find packages matching a regular expression
🗑️ Remove automatically installed & orphaned	apt remove ?garbage	Same as apt autoremove
🧹 Purge config-file leftovers	apt purge ?config-files	Remove packages with only residual config
📋 List manually installed packages by section	apt list '~i !~M (~slibs|~sperl|~spython)'	Filter by section regex
⬆️ Find upgradable packages	apt list ?upgradable	Packages with newer candidates
💣 Find broken dependencies	apt list ?broken	Packages with broken dependency chains
🏛️ Filter by architecture	apt list '?architecture(amd64)'	Using wildcards supported
🔗 Combined logical patterns	apt list '?and(?installed,?upgradable)'	AND/OR/NOT nesting

📖 DESCRIPTION

Starting with version 2.0, APT provides support for patterns, which can be used to query the apt cache for packages.

🧩 LOGIC PATTERNS

These patterns provide the basic means to combine other patterns into more complex expressions, as well as ?true and ?false patterns.

• ?and(PATTERN, PATTERN, ...), PATTERN PATTERN ... — Selects objects where all specified patterns match.
• ?false, ~F — Selects nothing.
• ?not(PATTERN), !PATTERN — Selects objects where PATTERN does not match.
• ?or(PATTERN, PATTERN, ...), PATTERN | PATTERN | ... — Selects objects where at least one of the specified patterns match.
• ?true, ~T — Selects all objects.
• (PATTERN) — Selects the same as PATTERN, can be used to work around precedence. Example: (~ramd64|~ri386)~nfoo

🎯 NARROWING PATTERNS

• ?all-versions(PATTERN) — Selects packages where all versions match PATTERN. When matching versions instead, same as PATTERN.
• ?any-version(PATTERN) — Selects any version where the pattern matches on the version.

For example, while ?and(?version(1),?version(2)) matches a package which has one version containing 1 and one version containing 2, ?any-version(?and(?version(1),?version(2))) restricts the ?and to act on the same version.

• ?narrow(PATTERN...) — Selects any version matching all PATTERNs, short for ?any-version(?and(PATTERN...)).

📦 PACKAGE PATTERNS

These patterns select specific packages.

• ?architecture(WILDCARD), ~rWILDCARD — 🏛️ Selects packages matching the specified architecture, which may contain wildcards using any.
• ?automatic, ~M — 🤖 Selects packages that were installed automatically.
• ?broken, ~b — 💥 Selects packages that have broken dependencies.
• ?config-files, ~c — 🗂️ Selects packages that are not fully installed, but have solely residual configuration files left.
• ?essential, ~E — ⭐ Selects packages that have Essential: yes set in their control file.
• ?exact-name(NAME) — 🎯 Selects packages with the exact specified name.
• ?garbage, ~g — 🗑️ Selects packages that can be removed automatically.
• ?installed, ~i — ✅ Selects packages that are currently installed.
• ?name(REGEX), ~nREGEX — 🔍 Selects packages where the name matches the given regular expression.
• ?obsolete, ~o — ⏳ Selects packages that no longer exist in repositories.
• ?upgradable, ~U — ⬆️ Selects packages that can be upgraded (have a newer candidate).
• ?virtual, ~v — 👻 Selects all virtual packages; that is packages without a version. These exist when they are referenced somewhere in the archive, for example because something depends on that name.

🔢 VERSION PATTERNS

These patterns select specific versions of a package.

• ?archive(REGEX), ~AREGEX — 📦 Selects versions that come from the archive matching the specified regular expression. Archive means the values after a= in apt-cache policy.
• ?codename(REGEX) — 🏷️ Selects versions that come from the codename matching the specified regular expression. Codename means the values after n= in apt-cache policy.
• ?origin(REGEX), ~OREGEX — 🌐 Selects versions that come from the origin matching the specified regular expression. Origin means the values after o= in apt-cache policy.
• ?section(REGEX), ~sREGEX — 📂 Selects versions where the section matches the specified regular expression.
• ?source-package(REGEX), ~eREGEX — 📜 Selects versions where the source package name matches the specified regular expression.
• ?source-version(REGEX) — 📋 Selects versions where the source package version matches the specified regular expression.
• ?version(REGEX), ~VREGEX — 🔖 Selects versions where the version string matches the specified regular expression.
• ?priority(NAME), ~pNAME — 🏅 Selects versions where the Priority string equals the given name.

🔗 PACKAGE RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS

These patterns match specific package versions that depend/conflict with some other packages.

• ?depends(PATTERN), ~DPATTERN → 🔗 depends on
• ?pre-depends(PATTERN), ~DPre-Depends:PATTERN → 🔗 pre-depends on
• ?suggests(PATTERN), ~DSuggests:PATTERN → 💡 suggests
• ?conflicts(PATTERN), ~DConflicts:PATTERN → ⚡ conflicts with
• ?replaces(PATTERN), ~DReplaces:PATTERN → 🔄 replaces
• ?obsoletes(PATTERN), ~DObsoletes:PATTERN → 🗑️ obsoletes
• ?breaks(PATTERN), ~DBreaks:PATTERN → 💔 breaks
• ?enhances(PATTERN), ~DEnhances:PATTERN → ✨ enhances
• Selects versions depending/pre-depending/suggesting/conflicting/etc on/with packages matching PATTERN.

• ?reverse-depType(PATTERN), ~RDepType:PATTERN — 🔄 Opposite of ?depends and friends — selects all packages that have reverse-dependencies (versions) matching PATTERN.

depType is one of the dependency types such as depends, so that we don't have to repeat the entire list from the first paragraph here.

💡 EXAMPLES

apt remove ?garbage

apt purge ?config-files

apt list '~i !~M (~slibs|~sperl|~spython)'

🔄 MIGRATING FROM APTITUDE

Patterns in apt are heavily inspired by patterns in aptitude, but with some tweaks:

• 🔹 Syntax is uniform: If there is an opening parenthesis after a term, it is always assumed to be the beginning of an argument list. In aptitude, a syntactic form ?foo(bar) could mean ?and(?foo,bar) if foo does not take an argument. In APT, this will cause an error.
• 🔹 Not all patterns are supported.
• 🔹 Some additional patterns are available, for example, for finding gstreamer codecs.
• 🔹 Escaping terms with ~ is not supported.
• 🔹 A trailing comma is allowed in argument lists.
• 🔹 ?narrow accepts infinite arguments.
• 🔹 foo cannot be used as a shortform for ?name(foo), as this can cause typos to go unnoticed: Consider ?and(...,~poptional): this requires the package to have required priority, but if you do not type the ~, it would require the package name to contain poptional.
• 🔹 Grouping patterns with (...) or writing ?or(A,B) as A|B are not supported. We do not believe that the use of | is that common, and the grouping is not necessary without it.
• 🔹 Dependency types for ~D and related operators need to be specified in the canonical case.

📚 SEE ALSO

• apt-get(8)
• apt(8)

🐛 BUGS

APT bug page[1]. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.

👤 AUTHOR

APT was written by the APT team <apt@packages.org>.

👥 AUTHORS

• Jason Gunthorpe
• APT team

📝 NOTES

1. APT bug page: http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt

APT 2.4.14 · 26 December 2021 · APT-PATTERNS(7)

📘 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📖 DESCRIPTION 🧩 LOGIC PATTERNS 🎯 NARROWING PATTERNS 📦 PACKAGE PATTERNS 🔢 VERSION PATTERNS 🔗 PACKAGE RELATIONSHIP PATTERNS 💡 EXAMPLES 🔄 MIGRATING FROM APTITUDE 📚 SEE ALSO 🐛 BUGS 👤 AUTHOR 👥 AUTHORS 📝 NOTES