Ubuntu – Get package description using apt

aptinfopackage-management

How do I get the prosaic description of a package using apt? I tried both apt-cache show and apt-cache showpkg but no luck.

Using synaptic it's easy as typing the package name and the description is given by the standard view, but sometimes I'd prefer to just use apt-cache, for example from terminal.

Best Answer

If you would just use apt-cache search package-name, all packages with "package-name" in it would be returned. To limit to a package named "package-name", use:

apt-cache search ^package-name$
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