When I execute less package.rpm, less shows me all sorts of meta info about the package. What is less exactly doing - does it have built in code to be able to extract meta info, or is an rpm structured in a way that the first part just looks like a text file?
I would assume the former, since head is not so helpful here. But to get to the real question: If I would like to grep through this meta data less showing me, how can I accomplish this?
If you browse through the less man page, you'll notice less has an INPUT PREPROCESSOR feature.
echo $LESSOPEN to view the location of this preprocessor, and use less/vim/cat to view its contents.
On my machine this preprocessor is /usr/bin/lesspipe.sh and it includes the following for rpms:
*.rpm) rpm -qpivl --changelog -- "$1"; handle_exit_status $? In effect, less hands off openning the file to rpm, and shows you the pagination of its output.
Obviously, to grep through this info, simply grep the output of rpm directly:
grep "foo" < <(rpm -qpivl --changelog -- bar.rpm) Or in general (thanks OrangeDog)
grep "foo" < <(lesspipe.sh bar.rpm) Note: $LESSOPEN Does not simply hold the location of lesspipe.sh - it begins with a | and ends with a %s so invoking it directly would result in errors.
grep "foo" < <($LESSOPEN bar.rpm)? Or maybe even just $LESSOPEN bar.rpm | grep "foo". If I would like to grep through this meta data less showing me, how can I accomplish this?
very simply; if you want to grep on "Version" for example:
less your.rpm | grep "Version" Note that less is using the rpm command; so better skip using less; and use rpm commands; like:
rpm -qip /path/to/uninstalled/rpm rpm -qi installed.rpm 