---
name: "xapian-quest"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "xapian-core"
version: "1:2.1.0-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/xapian-quest"
---

# xapian-quest(1)

Xapian command line search tool

## NAME

xapian-quest - Xapian command line search tool

## SYNOPSIS

**xapian-quest** \[*OPTIONS*\] *'QUERY'*

## DESCRIPTION

xapian-quest - Xapian command line search tool

NB: QUERY should be quoted to protect it from the shell.

## OPTIONS

- **-d**, **--db**=*DIRECTORY*

  database to search (multiple databases may be specified)

- **-m**, **--msize**=*MSIZE*

  maximum number of matches to return

- **-c**, **--check-at-least**=*HOWMANY*

  minimum number of matches to check

- **-s**, **--stemmer**=*LANG*

  set the stemming language, the default is 'english' (pass 'none' to disable stemming). Valid stemmers: arabic, armenian, basque, catalan, czech, danish, dutch, dutch\_porter, earlymodernenglish, english, esperanto, estonian, finnish, french, german, greek, hindi, hungarian, indonesian, irish, italian, lithuanian, lovins, nepali, norwegian, persian, polish, porter, portuguese, romanian, russian, serbian, sesotho, spanish, swedish, tamil, turkish, yiddish

- **-S**, **--stem-strategy**=*STRATEGY*

  set the stemming strategy (default: some). Valid strategies: all, all\_z, none, some, some\_full\_pos

- **-p**, **--prefix**=*PFX*:TERMPFX

  add a prefix

- **-b**, **--boolean-prefix**=*PFX*:TERMPFX

  add a boolean prefix

- **-f**, **--flags**=*FLAG1\[*,FLAG2\]...

  specify QueryParser flags (default: default).  Valid flags: accumulate, auto\_multiword\_synonyms, auto\_synonyms, boolean, boolean\_any\_case, cjk\_ngram, default, fuzzy, lovehate, ngrams, no\_positions, no\_proper\_noun\_heuristic, partial, phrase, pure\_not, spelling\_correction, synonym, wildcard, wildcard\_glob, wildcard\_multi, wildcard\_single, word\_breaks

- **-o**, **--default-op**=*OP*

  specify QueryParser default operator (default: or).  Valid operators: and, elite\_set, max, near, or, phrase, synonym

- **-w**, **--weight**=*SCHEME*

  specify weighting scheme to use, which can include parameters, e.g. **--weight=**'bm25 1 0 0 1 0' (default: bm25).

- **-F**, **--freqs**

  show query term frequencies

- **-h**, **--help**

  display this help and exit

- **-v**, **--version**

  output version information and exit