How to search for a package in Arch Linux

In this tutorial we are going to explain how to use pacman and pkgfile to search for packages in Arch Linux. We are going to use the shell all the time.

How to search with pacman?

The syntax is:

pacman -Ss packageName  
pacman -Ss Keywords

For example, search for nmap, type pacman command:

pacman -Ss python

How to search for a package with pkgfile?

The pkgfile command is a pacman .files metadata explorer.

Install pkgfile with pacman:

sudo pacman -S pkgfile

Type the following command to update index:

sudo pkgfile -u

Example on how to search with pkgfile:

pkgfile nginx  
pkgfile python  
pkgfile zsh

To display files provided by a remote packages, execute:

pkgfile -l packageName  
pkgfile -l python  
pkgfile -l zsh