quick internet search in terminal

#lynx #terminal #linux #archlinux

Do you ever need to do a quick search but don't want to open a browser just to find something and you already on a terminal?

The solution is quite easy actually. Just download lynx browser which is a CLI browser in your terminal.

in your shell (I use zsh) and I just put this code in there

urlencode(){
  declare str="$*"
  declare encoded=""
  declare i c x
  for ((i=0; i<${#str}; i++ )); do
    c=${str:$i:1}
    case "$c" in
      [-_.~a-zA-Z0-9] ) x="$c" ;;
      * ) printf -v x '%%%02x' "'$c";;
    esac
    encoded+="$x"
  done
  echo "$encoded"
}

duck(){
  declare url=$(urlencode "$*")
  lynx "https://duckduckgo.com/lite?q=$url"
}

alias "?"=duck

now when I go in my terminal I just type