---
title: SLOANE(1) Sloane User Manual | Version 1.7
date: April 20, 2014
---

# NAME

sloane - a command line interface to Sloane's
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences <http://oeis.org>

# SYNOPSIS

sloane [*options*] *search-terms*

# DESCRIPTION

The sloane command searches Sloane's On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer
Sequences (OEIS). The search terms are typically the leading term of a
sequence. For example,

    sloane 1,1,2,5,15,52,203,877,4140

returns entry A000110 (Bell numbers), and four more entries. One can
also search by sequence id (A-number), or even search for arbitrary
words. See the **EXAMPLES** section.

If no search terms are specified the standard input is read
line-by-line. In this mode the search is done locally against a
downloaded list of known sequences. If the sequence is in the OEIS, then
it is returned to the standard output; if not, it is ignored. This way
sloane can quickly filter out the sequences from the input that are in
the OEIS. Assuming that *FILE* contains one sequence per line,

    sloane <FILE

returns the subset of the sequences in *FILE* that are in the OEIS. To
also lookup the names of those sequences in the OEIS one could, for
instance, run

    sloane <FILE | xargs -L1 --verbose sloane

Sloane crops long lines to fit the widths of the terminal. If this is
unwanted, pipe the output through cat.

# OPTIONS

-k --keys=KEYS
:   Keys of fields to print (default: SN)

-a --all
:   Print all fields

-u --url
:   Print urls of found entries (but nothing else)

--update
:   Update the local sequence cache

-n --limit=INT
:   Fetch at most this many entries (default: 5)

-? --help
:   Display a short help message

-V --version
:   Print version information

# EXAMPLES

The most common search is for entries matching a sequence of consecutive terms:

    sloane 1,3,19,183,2371,38703

At the time of writing this particular query would return

    S A006531 1,1,3,19,183,2371,38703,763099,17648823,468603091,14050842303,
    N A006531 Semiorders on n elements.

As this illustrates, the default is to return just the sequence (S) and
the name (N) fields. To override the default one can use the keys
option. For instance, the following search shows the sequence, name,
comments, and formula fields of the sequence whose A-number is A006531:

    sloane --keys=SNCF id:A006531

The next example returns at most 3 results of a free text search:

    sloane -n3 "(2+2)-free posets"

To view the full entries of these 3 results in a browser (e.g., firefox)
one can use the url option:

    firefox `sloane --url -n3 "(2+2)-free posets"`

In the final example we use sloane to use the local cache to filter out
sequences from the standard input that are in the OEIS:

    sloane <<END
    1,2,3,6,11,23,47,106,235           # Comma separated integers
    1 2 444 90 120                     # Space separated integers
    '(3 9 27 88 123)                   # S-expression
    [2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37]  # Haskell list
    [1; 1; 2; 3; 5; 8; 13; 21]         # O'Caml list
    {1, -1, 2, -6, 24, -120, 720}      # Mathematica list
    END

The '#' character and any text after it is ignored by sloane. Note also
that sloane is quite liberal in the formatting of sequences it accepts.

# KEYS

These are the keys used by OEIS <http://oeis.org/eishelp2.html>.

    I  ID number

    S  1st line of unsigned sequence
    T  2nd line of unsigned sequence
    U  3rd line of unsigned sequence

    V  1st line of signed sequence
    W  2nd line of signed sequence
    X  3rd line of signed sequence

    N  Name
    C  Comments
    D  References
    H  Links
    F  Formula
    e  Examples

    p  Maple program
    t  Mathematica program
    o  Program in other language

    Y  Cross-references
    K  Keywords
    O  Offset
    A  Author
    E  Extensions and errors

# NOTES

Please use this program with moderation as not to overburden the
OEIS-server; see OEIS' policy on searching the database:
<http://oeis.org/wiki/Welcome#Policy_on_Searching_the_Database>.

# SEE ALSO

The sloane source code may be downloaded from
<https://github.com/akc/sloane>.

# AUTHOR

Anders Claesson <http://akc.is>