When you search for a package or set a display limit in aptitude, the string you enter is known as a “search pattern”. While the most basic usage of search patterns is to match packages by name, aptitude allows you to create much more complex searches. In addition to the visual interface, some command-line operations can use search terms; see Command-Line Reference for details.

A search pattern consists of one or more conditions (sometimes known as “terms”); packages match the pattern if they match all of its terms. Terms generally start with a question mark (“?”), followed by the name of the match term, which describes the search that the term performs: for instance, the term ?name matches package names, while the term ?version matches package versions. Finally, any additional parameters to the search term are placed in parentheses (see the documentation of individual terms for more information on this).