Querying installed package is something I do every now and then. It’s usually needed to find out if all the necessary dependencies of a package have been met. On Slackware it is usually accomplished with a simple:

For example:

As a way of practising programming, I decided to simulate the above command in Python 3. Here’s what I’ve coded:

#!/usr/bin/env python3



import glob, os, sys



if len(sys.argv) != 2:

        '''Check if the user provided the required argument'''

        print('The {0} command takes exactly 1 argument!'.format(sys.argv[0]))

else:

        packages_directory = '/var/log/packages/'

        package = sys.argv[1].lower()

        for files in glob.glob(packages_directory + '*' + package + '*'):

            print(os.path.basename(files))

It might be slightly slower than using Bash but it does the job. As I’m not a seasoned Python programmer, there’ll probably be ways of optimising the code, which I obviously welcome. Feel free to provide feedback.