List all packages installed in an Arch Linux based machine, with a short description (pure shell, no Bash required)

pacman-q.sh

#!/bin/sh

pacman -Qi | while read line; do
  IFS=':' read -ra p <<< "$line"
  case "${p[0]}" in
    *Name*) name="${p[1]}" ;;
    *Description*) desc="${p[1]}" ;;
    "") echo $name - $desc
  esac
done

## Sample output

#a52dec - A free library for decoding ATSC A/52 streams
#aalib - A portable ASCII art graphic library
#accountsservice - D-Bus interface for user account query and manipulation
#acl - Access control list utilities, libraries and headers