How to use apt to list available packages?

Just installed Debian and looking for ways to list all available packages using apt. After some search, i found that you can use apt-cache to list all available packages in debian.

To list all available packages from apt, follow the steps below:-

# this will list all packages available thru apt-get
$ apt-cache pkgnames

# this will only return you the relevant result
$ apt-cache search 'your search term here'

# this only return result match `postgresql-8*`
$ apt-cache search 'postgresql-8'

Tags: apt-get list, debian apt-get, Linux, linux command, linux tips

Posted at May 27th, 2009 by chua

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