Command-line search engine

Googler

© Lead Image © Andrea Danti, fotolia.com

© Lead Image © Andrea Danti, fotolia.com

Article from Issue 202/2017
Author(s):

With a few customizations, Googler plus a text-based browser offers faster, more accurate searching than a traditional web browser.

These days, doing a web search from the command line may seem like an anachronism. However, Googler [1] can be useful in a number of ways. It provides a headless search engine that can be called within a script. When combined with a text-based browser, it gives you access to the Internet. Most important of all, Googler offers the same search options and presentation of results as the Google home page, but with the use of a few aliases, in fewer keystrokes.

Googler is available in many distributions and runs in the most common command shells. However, you can get the latest stable version by running the command googler -u as soon as you install. To obtain the latest, possibly unstable, version, you can add --include-git to the command as well. Alternatively, if the latest version seems more of a risk than you are willing to take, you can compile Googler yourself with the command:

make disable-self-upgrade

[...]

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