[arch-general] script to reformat 'pacman -Ss' output into 2 readable columns (prevents blindness)

[Dave Reisner]

On Thu, Aug 05, 2010 at 10:51:45PM -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> 	I developed a script...

Hi.

Let's see what we can do about cutting back a little on the verbosity,
and upping the utility...

-------------------------

#!/bin/bash

pkg=()
desc=()
count=-1
WIDTH=${WIDTH:-50}

while read line; do
  if [[ $line =~ ^(testing|core|extra|community|community-testing)/* ]]; then
    (( count++ ))
    pkg[count]="$line"
    continue
  fi

  desc[count]+="$line"
done

i=0
while (( i <= count )); do
  IFS=$'\n' read -r -d'\0' -a blockdesc < <(fmt -w$WIDTH <<< "${desc[i]}")

  paste -d' ' <(printf "%-49s" "${pkg[i]}") <(echo "${blockdesc[0]}")

  for line in "${blockdesc[@]:1}"; do
    printf "%-50s%s\n" "" "$line"
  done

  (( ++i ))
  [[ $1 == -d ]] && echo
done

-------------------------

It takes STDIN, and accepts a -d option to add a space after each
package. Descriptions have a default width of 50 characters (meaning a
total width of 100 characters). You can alter this by specifying WIDTH
as an environment var, e.g.

$ pacman -Ss | WIDTH=30 ./foofilter -d

Personally I think pacman-color is a better solution that mangling the
output like this, but to each their own.

d