`pip search` returns results that only partially match the string

STR: (Using pip v7.1.2 with Python 2.7.10 under MSYS2.)

pip search "treeherder-client"

Expected: One result, the same as when just the string “treeherder” is used instead, eg:

[~/src]$ pip search "treeherder"
treeherder-client     - Python library to retrieve and submit data to the Treeherder API

Actual:

[~/src]$ pip search "treeherder-client" | wc -l
311
[~/src]$ pip search "treeherder-client" | tail -n 5
basket-client                             - A Python client for Mozilla's basket service.
OnPage-HUB-API-Client                     - Send Page to pager using OnPage HUB API
egenix-mxodbc-connect-client              - eGenix mxODBC Connect Client for Python
hapi-client                               - HyperDNS HAPI Client Libraries and CLI Tools
medeox-provider-client                    - A Medeox provider client library

These results contain the string “client” but not “treeherder”.

It would appear pip search is splitting strings on hyphens and then finding any results that match any of the resultant substrings. This is:

• not documented in the output of pip search -h or https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_search/
• not the behaviour that makes the most sense (IMO)

PyPI’s own search does return many results too, but at least that’s sorted by weight: https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=treeherder-client&submit=search

Perhaps the output from pip search could:

• sort by how precise a match it is
• offer pagination (311 results is not overly helpful)
• either default to exact-match (particularly if there are hundreds of results), or at least offer that as an option

Many thanks 😃

[daverickdunn]

Sorry to bump this aging thread, but has this been considered for future updates? Seems like a very simple to implement, yet extremely useful feature; just a simple option to do a strict match. It’s irrelevant if the PyPI API is no longer maintained, all a user needs are the results filtered. One is often forced to pipe into grep to find what they want, but that of course doesn’t help Windows users…

[dstufft]

Closing this since pip is just using the PyPI search interface and thus it has no mechanism to really control it’s searching mechanism. However if we implement something like #395 then we could work on something like this.