You want a listing of PEAR packages. From this list you want to learn more about each package and decide if you want to install the package.

Browse packages at http://pear.php.net/packages.php or search for packages at http://pear.php.net/package-search.php. Use pear 's remote-list command to get listing of PEAR packages or the search command to search for packages.

There are a few ways to review PEAR's packages. First, to browse the listings in a directory-style fashion, go to http://pear.php.net/packages.php. From there you can burrow into each individual PEAR category.

Alternatively, you can search through the listings at http://pear.php.net/package-search.php. The search page allows you to search by package name, author, category, and release date.

You can ask the PEAR package manager to provide you with a listing using the remote-list command:

% pear remote-list
Available packages:
=  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
+----------------------+---------+
| Package              | Version |
| Archive_Tar          | 0.9     |
| Auth                 | 1.0.2   |

...

| XML_Transformer      | 0.3     |
| XML_Tree             | 1.1     |
+----------------------+---------+

The short form of remote-list is rl.

To search for package names from the command line, use the search command:

% pear search auth
Matched packages:
=  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
+-----------+--------+-------+------------------------------------+
| Package   | Latest | Local |                                    |
| Auth      | 1.0.2  | 1.0.2 | Creating an authentication system. |
| Auth_HTTP | 1.0.1  | 1.0.1 | HTTP authentication for PHP        |
+-----------+--------+-------+------------------------------------+

This does a case-insensitive search of package names and returns the package name, the latest version number, the version you have installed (if any), and a short description about the package.

Recipe 21.4 to find out more information about a package.