# Surfraw

surfraw provides a fast UNIX command line interface to a variety of popular WWW search engines. Surfraw was originally created by Julian Assange.

## Installation

Install surfraw from the official repositories.

## Configuration

Surfraw uses the default browser to open the result. The behaviour can be customized via `~/.surfraw.conf`

    SURFRAW_graphical_browser=/usr/bin/chromium
    #SURFRAW_text_browser=/usr/bin/elinks
    SURFRAW_graphical=yes

## Usage

Surfraw consists of a collection of shell scripts, called elvi, each of which searches a specific web site.

To see the list of elvi type:

    surfraw -elvi

You can call surfraw in full, or the shortened form:

    sr duckduckgo Archlinux

You can also add surfraw to your $PATH to call the elvi directly.

There are over 100 elvi available for searching the web, e.g. from amazon:

    surfraw amazon -search=books -country=en -q Stanislaw Lem

To search the aur:

    sr aur yaourt

To search this wiki:

    sr archwiki surfraw

For a full list of web site search scripts see: List of Elvi

## Troubleshooting

### /usr/bin/surfraw: line 487: <url>: No such file or directory

If you get a error message like this:

    $ sr google foo
    /usr/bin/surfraw: line 487: http://www.google.com/search?q=foo&num=30: No such file or directory

That happens because you haven't specified a browser. Add your graphical browser's location to config file, like this:

    /etc/xdg/surfraw/conf

    def SURFRAW_graphical_browser /usr/bin/firefox

Categories:

- Internet applications
- Search