More useful Homebrew searches #macOS #homebrew
Homebrew, the third-party package manager on macOS, allows searching for packages by name, but the list that comes out only contains package names. That's not always very useful, particulary when you are not sure what you are looking for.
To get the package description along with the package name simply add --desc to your brew search command.
For example, let's look for a library for performing file diffs with color highlighting:
$ brew search --desc diff
apgdiff: Another PostgreSQL diff tool
cdiff: View colored diff with side by side and auto pager support
cern-ndiff: Numerical diff tool
colordiff: Color-highlighted diff(1) output
cppad: Differentiation of C++ Algorithms
dhex: Ncurses based advanced hex editor featuring diff mode and more
diff-so-fancy: Good-lookin' diffs with diff-highlight and more
...
You can also search using regex in both the description and name of the package as long as you supply the --desc option:
$ brew search --desc /[cC]olor.*[dD]iff/
cdiff: View colored diff with side by side and auto pager support
colordiff: Color-highlighted diff(1) output
icdiff: Improved colored diff