diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'src')
| -rw-r--r-- | src/nix/search.cc | 6 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | src/nix/search.md | 15 |
2 files changed, 12 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/src/nix/search.cc b/src/nix/search.cc index ef0139e09..97ef1375e 100644 --- a/src/nix/search.cc +++ b/src/nix/search.cc @@ -67,11 +67,9 @@ struct CmdSearch : InstallableValueCommand, MixJSON settings.readOnlyMode = true; evalSettings.enableImportFromDerivation.setDefault(false); - // Empty search string should match all packages - // Use "^" here instead of ".*" due to differences in resulting highlighting - // (see #1893 -- libc++ claims empty search string is not in POSIX grammar) + // Recommend "^" here instead of ".*" due to differences in resulting highlighting if (res.empty()) - res.push_back("^"); + throw UsageError("Must provide at least one regex! To match all packages, use '%s'.", "nix search <installable> ^"); std::vector<std::regex> regexes; std::vector<std::regex> excludeRegexes; diff --git a/src/nix/search.md b/src/nix/search.md index 0c5d22549..f65ac9b17 100644 --- a/src/nix/search.md +++ b/src/nix/search.md @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ R""( * Show all packages in the `nixpkgs` flake: ```console - # nix search nixpkgs + # nix search nixpkgs ^ * legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.AMB-plugins (0.8.1) A set of ambisonics ladspa plugins @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ R""( * Show all packages in the flake in the current directory: ```console - # nix search + # nix search . ^ ``` * Search for Firefox or Chromium: @@ -64,11 +64,16 @@ R""( `nix search` searches [*installable*](./nix.md#installables) (which can be evaluated, that is, a flake or Nix expression, but not a store path or store derivation path) for packages whose name or description matches all of the -regular expressions *regex*. For each matching package, It prints the +regular expressions *regex*. For each matching package, It prints the full attribute name (from the root of the [installable](./nix.md#installables)), the version and the `meta.description` field, highlighting the substrings that -were matched by the regular expressions. If no regular expressions are -specified, all packages are shown. +were matched by the regular expressions. + +To show all packages, use the regular expression `^`. In contrast to `.*`, +it avoids highlighting the entire name and description of every package. + +> Note that in this context, `^` is the regex character to match the beginning of a string, *not* the delimiter for +> [selecting a derivation output](@docroot@/command-ref/new-cli/nix.md#derivation-output-selection). # Flake output attributes |