yum has a very useful feature used to find out which package provides an specific file or a file pattern.

pacman doesn’t have such feature but it’s possible to get similar information using pkgfile.

To install pkgfile:

$ sudo pacman -S pkgfile
$ sudo pkgfile --update

And to search a package that contains a file, use the command:

$ pkgfile bash
core/bash
community/gulp
community/nodejs-grunt-cli

To get details about each match:

$ pkgfile -v bash
core/bash 4.3.042-4                 /usr/bin/bash
community/gulp 3.9.0-2              /usr/lib/node_modules/gulp/completion/bash
community/nodejs-grunt-cli 0.1.13-8 /usr/lib/node_modules/grunt-cli/completion/bash

It’s also possible to match using the full path:

$ pkgfile -v /usr/bin/bash
core/bash 4.3.042-4 /usr/bin/bash

To perform a search similar to yum provides, using a glob pattern, use:

$ pkgfile -gv '*bin/bash'
core/bash 4.3.042-4 /usr/bin/bash