UK TeX FAQ -- question 51

### Finding files by Web search

Two of the CTAN web servers offer a search facility: http://www.tex.ac.uk/search and http://www.ctan.org/search; you can look for a file whose name you already know (in pretty much the same way as the `ftp`-based `quote site index` command), or you can do a keyword-based search of the catalogue.

The search script produces URLs for files that match your search criteria. The URLs point to the CTAN site or mirror of your choice; when you first use the script, it asks you to choose a site, and stores its details in a cookie on your machine. Choose a site that is close to you, to reduce network load.

The Catalogue, which the search script uses, may be browsed independently: it's actually kept within the archive itself: to browse it, visit http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/, http://www.dante.de/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/ or http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/

`Catalogue`
  help/Catalogue.tar.gz (this is a very large directory tree: browsing, rather than downloading the whole tree, is encouraged)