[CentOS] Strange yum behavior

[Johnny Hughes]

On Sun, 2006-11-12 at 00:43 -0500, Jim Perrin wrote:
> > 'yum search R' returns an impossibly-long list.  So I tried 'yum
> > search R.x86_64' and 'yum search R-2.3.0' and few others to no
> > avail.  (Google revealed that R package does exist in kbsingh
> > repository.)  However, 'yum install R' did offer to install the
> > correct package.
> >
> > Can someone enlighten me as to why did the searches failed or
> > generated a hugh list of alternatives, while the install hit
> > right on the mark?
> 
> I believe it's because 'yum search' is not case sensitive and so will
> return most things with 'r' in them or the description of them. This
> question is probably best suited for the yum mailing list instead, but
> I'm fairly sure that's the cause. It would be akin to searching for
> the letter 'a' in this email, when you really mean the word 'a'.
> 

Right ... and if you know the name of the package, you would instead do
'yum info' not "yum search".

yum search is looking for a package that contains the word (or a partial
match of the word) you put in anywhere (in the package name, in the name
of the files it contains, etc.).  This would match everything for which
there is an r ... which would be every package in the distro :P

"yum info R" gives you exactly what you want ....

Name   : R
Arch   : i386
Version: 2.3.0
Release: 2.el4.kb
Size   : 19 M
Repo   : kbs-CentOS-Extras
Summary: A language for data analysis and graphics




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