RPM query output formatting (print your arch!)

By default, rpm doesn’t print a package’s arch when you query it with rpm -q. On a x86_64 system, you’ll see something like that:

[root@earth ~]# rpm -q libselinux
libselinux-1.33.4-5.el5
libselinux-1.33.4-5.el5

not very usefult, is it ?

To make rpm print the arch, well it’s easy, just use the –qf (–queryformat) option, with the ARCH tag:

rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME} %{ARCH}\n"

To know all the printable tags:

rpm --querytags

For example, this will give you something similar to rpm -q, but with the arch at the end of the line:

rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n"

[root@earth ~]# rpm -q --qf "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n" libselinux
libselinux-1.33.4-5.el5 x86_64
libselinux-1.33.4-5.el5 i386