pip search only finds whole-word matches

[stephen-dexda]

Environment

• pip version: 19.2.1
• Python version: 3.7.2

Description

pip search only returns results where the query term is a "whole word" in the package name or description (delimited by hyphen or space).

So e.g. pip search prometheus will find prometheus-foo, but not prometheus_client.

This issue was raised in #6309, which was closed as being a PyPi issue, however PyPi does succeed with the above query, contrary to one of the comments on that issue before it was closed/locked.

Related bug against PyPi: pypi/warehouse#5506

Expected behavior

pip search foo returns anything with the substring foo in the name or summary.

[chrahunt]

PyPI uses a different query for requests from the website (here) vs the backend for the XMLRPC API that pip uses (here).

In the XMLRPC API backend implementation, it doesn't look like there's a mechanism for us to include a wildcard in any of the allowed fields (since "match" doesn't support wildcards per the docs).

I would also note that even the PyPI web search does not do a full substring query. For me, "zmd" returns zero results, but "zmzmd" returns the zmzmdr package.

[chrahunt]

This may be better tackled as a topic on discuss.python.org (I didn't see anything existing for "search" or "discover") or in pypi/warehouse#6236. At least it needs to be clearer how people with a desire to improve things can contribute in this area.

[pradyunsg]

Closing this since pip search is no longer usable on PyPI: #5216