Surfraw

Surfraw provides a fast UNIX command line interface to a variety of popular WWW search engines. Surfraw was originally created by Julian Assange.

Installation

Install the surfraw package.

Configuration

Surfraw uses the default browser to open the successful query. If none of the standard browsers are installed, Surfraw will call $BROWSER. If that variable is empty, you will get an error message as Surfraw has no way to open the query. You can configure your browser, and any other options, via ~/.config/surfraw/conf:

SURFRAW_graphical_browser=/usr/bin/chromium
#SURFRAW_text_browser=/usr/bin/elinks
SURFRAW_graphical=yes

There is a default configuration file installed at /etc/xdg/surfraw/conf that contains all of the configurable options.

Usage

Surfraw consists of a collection of shell scripts, called elvi, each of which searches a specific web site.

To see the list of elvi type:

$ surfraw -elvi

You can call surfraw in full, or the shortened form:

$ sr duckduckgo topic_name

You can also add /usr/lib/surfraw to your $PATH to call the elvi directly.

There are over 100 elvi available for searching the web, e.g. from amazon:

$ surfraw amazon -search=books -country=en -q Stanislaw Lem 

To search the AUR:

sr aur package_name

To search this wiki:

sr archwiki article_name

For a full list of web site search scripts see: List of Elvi