I usually use google but whenever I load it in a text browser I have to press down several times to go to the field where you enter the search string. This is redundant. How do people use text-only web browsers to do web searches?
2 Answers
For most search engines, you can just modify the URL, append ?q=<term>
and do the search. E.g. -
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hello
https://www.google.com/search?q=hello
http://www.bing.com/search?q=hello
+1 for Bibhas answer (try searching with eg links www.duckduckgo.com
:/ ).
Surfraw can automatize that. It provides a fast unix command line interface to a variety of popular WWW search engines and other artifacts of power:
Surfraw uses your prefered text or graphical browser to display the result. This can be customized via ~/.surfraw.conf
(XDG's supported: ~/.config/surfraw/conf
):
SURFRAW_graphical_browser=/usr/bin/Firefox
SURFRAW_text_browser=/usr/bin/links
SURFRAW_graphical=no
An then,
Search DDG for "foo":
$ sr duckduckgo foo
See Stackexchange's latest unanswered questions:
$ sr stack -sort=null
Where duckduckgo and stack are Elvi Full list of Elvi, just like DDG bangs!
-
tuk0z - when run in
gnome-terminal
, I can't getsurfraw
to recognize~/.config/surfraw/conf
, but when I copy that conf to~/.surfraw.conf
, it works fine - even though that second file is not even mentioned inman surfraw
. I'm not sure what XDG's are. Could you clarify?– DiagonCommented Jun 10, 2020 at 3:23 -
Well, I found their new home on gitlab, and in their config documentation I don't see any mention of
~/.config/surfraw/conf
. I'll have to look more, but it appears that theirman
page is out of date.– DiagonCommented Jun 10, 2020 at 3:31