Surfraw is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 POSIX

POSIX

POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

-compliant (i.e. meant for Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

 etc.) command-line shell

Shell (computing)

A shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users of an operating system which provides access to the services of a kernel. However, the term is also applied very loosely to applications and may include any software that is "built around" a particular component, such as web...

 program for interfacing with a number of web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

-based search engine

Search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

s. It was created in July 2000 and is licensed under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 and written in the Bourne shell

Bourne shell

The Bourne shell, or sh, was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7 and most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh - which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell - even when more modern shells are used by most users.Developed by Stephen Bourne at AT&T...

 language.

It uses what it calls "elvi" (a tribute to Elvis); elvi are interface widgets for specific engines and databases such as Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, AltaVista

AltaVista

AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...

, Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

, Dejanews, Freshmeat

Freshmeat

Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a website owned by Geeknet that allows computer users to keep track of the latest software releases and updates as well as write/read reviews and articles, send or receive comments to or from the author, and many other features...

, research index, Slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

, ArXiv, and a number of others. It allows options for configuration of using a shell browser (lynx

Lynx (web browser)

Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very configurable.-Usage:Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support...

, w3m

W3m

w3m is a free software/open source text-based web browser. It has support for tables, frames, SSL connections, color and inline images on suitable terminals...

) or a graphical browser (Firefox, Mozilla

Mozilla

Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....

, Konqueror

Konqueror

Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment...

).

According to its creator Julian Assange

Julian Assange

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...

: "Surfraw provides a fast unix command line

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

 interface to a variety of popular WWW search engines and other artifacts of power. It reclaims google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, altavista

AltaVista

AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...

, dejanews, freshmeat

Freshmeat

Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a website owned by Geeknet that allows computer users to keep track of the latest software releases and updates as well as write/read reviews and articles, send or receive comments to or from the author, and many other features...

, research index, slashdot

Slashdot

Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

, and many others from the false-prophet, pox-infested heathen lands of html

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 forms, placing these wonders where they belong; deep in unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 heartland, as god-loving extensions to the shell."

Commands

To see the list of elvi, one can issue the command surfraw -elvi (or the shorter sr -elvi, as sr and surfraw are aliased

Alias (Unix shell)

In computing, alias is a command in various command line interpreters such as Unix shells, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell, which enables a replacement of a word by another string. It is mainly used for abbreviating a system command, or for adding default arguments to a regularly used command...

 to mean the same thing); to search using an elvi, use:
sr elvi-name [options] searchterms

For example, to search Google for information on "Debian ports", using the "I'm feeling lucky" option:
sr google -l Debian ports

Or, one could search Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 for the "surfraw" article like this:
sr wikipedia surfraw

Surfraw's commands can be shortened even further to require only the name of the elvi (i.e. wikipedia surfraw) without the sr or surfraw prefixes; it does this by modifying the current shell's

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

 (e.g., bash's) startup files with the provided surfraw-update-path command.

External links

• Surfraw homepage at Debian
  Debian
  Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
  
   projects
• Package page at Debian
  Debian
  Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...