WEBSEARCH(1p)

💖 WEBSEARCH — the 1p girlies know 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to WebSearch, a whole web-searching application that also happens to be the cutest little demo of WWW::Search in existence. it's giving "User Contributed Perl Documentation" energy, and honestly? iconic.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

WebSearch [-m MaxCount] [-e SearchEngine] [-o option] [-o option...]
[-ardvV] query

like, that's the whole vibe. one query, a lil pile of flags, and off you go 🦋

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so this program gives you a command-line interface to web search engines, and it lists all the URLs it finds for whatever query you throw at it. it's also a super simple demonstration of the WWW::Search Perl library, in case you wanted to see how the sausage gets made 🍓

it supports a bunch of search engines — run WebSearch --list to see which backends are actually installed on your machine. no cap.

a more sophisticated client is AutoSearch, which keeps a change list of found objects (very main character of it).

for examples and hints about searches, go peek at AutoSearch. iykyk 💅

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

WebSearch uses Getopt::Long, so you can go double-minus with long option names, or single-minus with one-letter abbreviations. both slay.

• --engine e_name, -e e_name — the string e_name is the name of (the module for) the search engine you want. Capitalization matters, bestie, do not play with it. run perldoc WWW::Search to find out what the default is (probably Null). and use --list to get a list of installed backends 💖
• --gui, -g — performs the search in a way that mimics the default browser-based search. Not implemented for all backends, so check the documentation for each backend before you get your hopes up 😭
• --list — prints to STDERR a \n-separated list of installed backends. yes, STDERR. yes, really.
• --max max_count, -m max_count — specify the maximum number of hits to retrieve. set your limit, queen 👑
• --option o_string, -o o_string — specify a search-engine option in the form 'key=value' (or just 'key'). can be repeated for as many options as you need, and keys can be repeated too. go off 🫶
• --count, -c — as the first line of output, print the approximate hit count. as the last line of output, print the actual hit count. two counts, one flag, no notes ✨
• --terse, -t — do not print any URLs. only useful if you also specify --count. and fr fr: if you specify --terse but not --count, there will be no output no matter how many hits are found! 💀
• --all, -a — for each hit result, print all the URLs that the search engine indicated were equivalent to it. (some URLs may refer to the same object, that's normal.) can be combined with --verbose; can not be combined with --raw. choose your fighter 🌈
• --raw, -r — for each hit result, print the raw HTML. not implemented for all backends, so don't come for me if your backend ghosts you 🙈
• --verbose, -v — verbose mode. enumerate the returned URLs and show the description, score, date, etc. for each. the full tea ☕
• --VERSION, -V — print version information and exit immediately. bye bestie 👋
• --debug <i>, -d <i> — display back-end debugging information (with debug level <i>). numbers go brrr 🔥
• --host <hostname.sub.domain> — set the _host option for the WWW::Search object (backend-dependent).
• --port <i> — set the _port option for the WWW::Search object (backend-dependent).
• --username <bbunny> — set the username with which to login to the backend. what's up, doc 🐰
• --password <c4rr0t5> — set the password with which to login to the backend. (yes, that's the password. yes, it's carrots. yes, i'm obsessed.)
• --lwpdebug, -l — display low-level libwww-perl debugging information. deep in the libwww weeds, we love to see it 🧚

🦋 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🦋

the environment variable http_proxy (or HTTP_PROXY) specifies a proxy, if any. that's it, that's the section 💜

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• for the library, see WWW::Search.
• for a more sophisticated client, see AutoSearch.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

WebSearch was written by John Heidemann, <johnh@isi.edu>. WebSearch is maintained by Martin Thurn, <mthurn@cpan.org>. kings, honestly 🫶

💅 COPYRIGHT 💅

Copyright (c) 1996-1997 University of Southern California. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by the University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute. The name of the University may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

like, no warranty, no promises, no drama — read the whole thing, bestie, don't skim it 😭

and that's the whole page!! 💖✨🎀

this gorgeous thing came to you courtesy of perl v5.30.3, dated 2020-09-10, and it goes by WEBSEARCH(1p). periodt 💅🌸🦋