Upgrade from 0.23.10 to 0.25.5 broke regular expressions support. # eix -c 'kudzu|pyrenamer' [N] sec-policy/selinux-kudzu (--): SELinux policy for kudzu [N] sys-apps/kudzu (~1.2.83-r1): Red Hat Hardware detection tools [N] sys-apps/pyrenamer (~0.6.0): Mass rename files [N] sys-libs/libkudzu (1.2.57.1): Red Hat Hardware detection tools Found 4 matches. # eix -c '(kudzu|pyrenamer)' [N] dev-python/rhpl (~0.219): Library of python code used by Red Hat Linux programs [N] sys-apps/hwsetup (1.2-r2): Hardware setup program from Knoppix - used only on LiveCD [N] sys-apps/kudzu (~1.2.83-r1): Red Hat Hardware detection tools [N] sys-libs/libkudzu (1.2.57.1): Red Hat Hardware detection tools Found 4 matches. # eix -c '\<kudzu\>|\<pyrenamer\>' [N] sys-libs/libkudzu (1.2.57.1): Red Hat Hardware detection tools In short, weird behavior. A symptom of wrong results seems to be that eix takes a significantly longer time before producing them. Did not find a relevant commit in eix git after 0.25.5 tag. qsearch works fine on same input.
What you are probably expecting is that the options -s (--name) and -r (--regex) are always the default - they are not; if you want to force them you must specify them. By default, eix uses a heuristics on your expresseion to guess which match field and which match algorithm you "probably" meant and chooses this algorithm if you did not specify any other. The heuristics is defined in DEFAULT_MATCH_FIELD and DEFAULT_MATCH_ALGORITHM (The default content of these variables has changed several times in various eix versions). If you do not like the heuristics, you can fix your choice by putting DEFAULT_MATCH_FIELD=name DEAFULT_MATCH_ALGORITHM=regex into your /etc/eixrc file.
(In reply to comment #1) > What you are probably expecting is that the options -s (--name) > and -r (--regex) are always the default - they are not; > if you want to force them you must specify them. You are right -- I tried forcing -r (with no effect), but didn't realize that -s is also determined heuristically. Feel free to close as INVALID. Although, perhaps DEFAULT_MATCH_FIELD heuristic can be improved, since something simple like "eix -c '(kudzu|pyrenamer)'" makes it select something other than -s (does it select --deps by any chance?).
(In reply to comment #2) > Although, perhaps DEFAULT_MATCH_FIELD heuristic can be improved, since > something simple like "eix -c '(kudzu|pyrenamer)'" makes it select something > other than -s (does it select --deps by any chance?). $ eix --print DEFAULT_MATCH_FIELD [\ ] description [@] set http.*: homepage / category/name GPL|BSD|Art license [<>=!()] deps name Yep, using any of the symbols <>=!() causes a search in deps (which BTW takes much longer, because not only the package name but the data of all versions of every package must be checked.) You are right that perhaps () should be removed from this list. On the other hand, () may be "simple" for regular expresssions, but it is not that "simple" for all other search algorithms. The heuristics could be improved if it would take the selected match algorithm into account, but perhaps such a big magic is too confusing.
The "simple" fix (removing ()) is now in eix's git master on BerliOS (>=eix-0.26.1). Probably, the "complex" fix (making field/algorithm selection depending on each other) will not be implemented; I think it would cause more confusion than help.
+*eix-0.26.1 (24 Jul 2012) + + 24 Jul 2012; Jeremy Olexa <darkside@gentoo.org> -eix-0.26.0.ebuild, + -files/eix-0.26.0-tools.patch, +eix-0.26.1.ebuild, metadata.xml: + Version bump from upstream for bug fixes (closes Gentoo bugs 425512, 426256, + 427644)
