Surfraw – Shell Users’ Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web

The first tool is perhaps one of the least well known of the applications in this article. Surfraw (Shell Users’ Revolutionary Front Rage Against the Web) provides a command line interface to a variety of popular Web search engines and sites, including Google, Wikipedia, Ebay, GitHub, lastfm, Slashdot, SourceForge, Project Guntenberg, Internet Movie Database, CPAN, dictionaries, weather, currency conversion, and many others.

Surfraw consists of a collection of shell scripts, called elvi, each of which searches a specific web site. It allows options for configuration of using a console browser (such as Elinks, w3m) or a graphical browser (such as Firefox, Konqueror).

Surfraw makes it really fast to find the information you are seeking. It is in essence a a console version of the custom search bars you can have in modern graphic browsers. It abstracts the browser from input.

Features include:

• Over 100 different elvi.
• Bookmark support.
• Abstracts the browser away from input.
• Write your own Elvi.

Website: github.com/kisom/surfraw
Support:
Developer: The Surfraw-Devel Team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

Return to Pick of the Bunch: Console Applications

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