EXPAC(1)

✨ EXPAC(1) ✨ — the expac manual 💖

🎀 NAME 🎀

expac — alpm data extraction utility

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

Usage: expac [options] <format> targets...

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so expac is a data extraction tool for alpm databases, and it's literally giving printf-like flexibility ✨. It's meant to be a simple tool for other pacman based utilities that don't link against the library. It uses pacman.conf as a config file for locating and loading your local and sync databases.

When you invoke expac, you supply a format string — usually one to many of the formatting tokens (peep the FORMATTING section 💅) — plus any relevant options and zero to many targets. The format string has to be the first non-option argument. Targets can be a simple package name, a query string (in the case of a search), or repo/package syntax when the -sync option is supplied. Obsessed.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -Q, --query — search the local database for provided targets. This is the default behavior.
• -S, --sync — search the sync databases for provided targets.
• -s, --search — search for packages matching the strings specified by targets. This is a boolean AND query and regex is allowed.
• -g, --group — return packages matching the specified targets as package groups.
• --config <file> — read from file for alpm initialization instead of /etc/pacman.conf.
• -H, --humansize <size> — format package sizes in SI units according to size. Valid options are: B, K, M, G, T, P, E, Z, Y.
• -1, --readone — stop searching after the first result. This only has an effect on -S operations without -s.
• -d, --delim <string> — separate each package with the specified string. The default value is a newline character.
• -l, --listdelim <string> — separate each list item with the specified string. Lists are any interpreted sequence specified with a capital letter. The default value is two spaces.
• -p, --file — interpret targets as paths to local files.
• -t, --timefmt <format> — output time described by the specified format. This string is passed directly to strftime(3). The default format is %c.
• -v, --verbose — output more. Package not found errors will be shown, and empty field values will display as 'None'.
• -V, --version — display version information and quit.
• -h, --help — display the help message and quit.

🌈 FORMATTING 🌈

The format argument allows the following interpreted sequences, bestie:

• %a — architecture
• %B — backup files
• %b — build date
• %C — conflicts with (no version strings)
• %D — depends on
• %d — description
• %E — depends on (no version strings)
• %e — package base
• %f — filename (only with -S)
• %F — files (only with -Q)
• %g — base64 encoded PGP signature (only with -S)
• %G — groups
• %H — conflicts with
• %h — sha256sum
• %i — has install scriptlet (only with -Q)
• %k — download size (only with -S)
• %l — install date (only with -Q)
• %L — licenses
• %m — install size
• %M — modified backup files (only with -Q)
• %n — package name
• %N — required by
• %O — optional deps
• %o — optional deps (no descriptions)
• %p — packager name
• %P — provides
• %R — replaces (no version strings)
• %r — repo
• %s — md5sum
• %S — provides (no version strings)
• %T — replaces
• %u — project URL
• %V — package validation method
• %v — version
• %w — install reason (only with -Q)
• %! — result number (auto-incremented counter, starts at 0)
• %% — literal %

quick lil' note: for any lowercase tokens aside from %m and %k, full printf support is allowed, e.g. %-20n. This does not apply to any list based, date, or numerical output.

Standard backslash escape sequences are supported, as per printf(1).

⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

Emulate pacman's search function:

$ expac -Ss '%r/%n %v\n    %d' <search terms>

List the oldest 10 installed packages (by build date):

$ expac --timefmt=%s '%b\t%n' | sort -n | head -10

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Dave Reisner <d@falconindy.com>

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later bestie!! this iconic manual is expac 10, dated 2026-08-10 🫶💜