To get a list of all of the tags your version of RPM knows about, run the command 'rpm --querytags'. It will print out a list like (but much longer then) this:
RPMTAG_NAME RPMTAG_VERSION RPMTAG_RELEASE RPMTAG_SERIAL RPMTAG_SUMMARY RPMTAG_DESCRIPTION RPMTAG_BUILDTIME RPMTAG_BUILDHOST RPMTAG_INSTALLTIME RPMTAG_SIZE
As all of these tags begin with RPMTAG_, you may omit it from query format specifiers and it will be omitted from the rest of this documentation for the same reason.
A tag can consist of one element or an array of elements. Each element can be a string or number only.
The query format is similar to a C style printf string, which the printf(2) man page provides a good introduction to. However, as RPM already knows the type of data that is being printed, you must omit the type specifier. In its place put the tag name you wish to print enclosed in curly braces ({}). For example, the following RPM command prints the names and sizes of all of the packages installed on a system:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME} %{SIZE}\n"
If you want to use printf formatters, they go between the % and {. To change the above command to print the NAME in the first 30 bytes and right align the size to, use:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%-30{NAME} %10{SIZE}\n"
To iterate over a set of parallel arrays, enclose the format to be used to print each item in the array within square brackets ([]). For example, to print all of the files and their sizes in the slang-devel package followed by their sizes, with one file per line, use this command:
rpm -q --queryformat "[%-50{FILENAMES} %10{FILESIZES}\n]" slang-devel
Note that since the trailing newline is inside of the square brackets, one newline is printed for each filename.
A popular query format to try to construct is one that prints the name of a package and the name of a file it contains on one line, repeated for every file in the package. This query can be very useful for passing information to any program that's line oriented (such as grep or awk). If you try the obvious,
rpm --queryformat "[%{NAME} %{FILENAMES}\n]" cdp
If you try this, you'll see RPM complain about a "parallel array size mismatch". Internally, all items in RPM are actually arrays, so the NAME is a string array containing one element. When you tell RPM to iterate over the NAME and FILENAMES elements, RPM notices the two tags have different numbers of elements and complains.
To make this work properly, you need to tell RPM to always print the first item in the NAME element. You do this by placing a '=' before the tag name, like this:
rpm --queryformat "[%{=NAME} %{FILENAMES}\n]" cdp
which will give you the expected output.
cdp /usr/bin/cdp cdp /usr/bin/cdplay cdp /usr/man/man1/cdp.1
rpm -q --queryformat "%{NAME} %{INSTALLTIME:date}\n" fileutils rpm -q --queryformat "[%{FILEMODES:perms} %{FILENAMES}\n]" rpm rpm -q --queryformat \ "[%{REQUIRENAME} %{REQUIREFLAGS:depflags} %{REQUIREVERSION}\n]" \ vlock
The :shescape may be used on plain strings to get a string which can pass through a single level of shell and give the original string.
%|SOMETAG?{present}:{missing}|
Notice that the subformats "present" and "missing" must be inside of curly braces.
rpm -q --qf '[%{filenames} %{fileverifyflags}\n]' dev
The flags are defined in rpmlib.h (check there for changes):
#define RPMVERIFY_MD5 (1 << 0) #define RPMVERIFY_FILESIZE (1 << 1) #define RPMVERIFY_LINKTO (1 << 2) #define RPMVERIFY_USER (1 << 3) #define RPMVERIFY_GROUP (1 << 4) #define RPMVERIFY_MTIME (1 << 5) #define RPMVERIFY_MODE (1 << 6) #define RPMVERIFY_RDEV (1 << 7)
A 1 bit in the output of the query means the check is enabled.