What different between pacman -Sy and pacman -Fy?

Using pacman I can update package databases using the following command pacman -Sy or pacman -Fy what is the difference between this keys of pacman and what is better to use?

Asked By: Besha

Source

If you take a look at the man page you see that:

-S is for installing packages.
-F is for querying the files database.
-y refreshes the package database, and it’s valid with both -S and -F.

The two major options (-S and -F) do very different things, but in both cases -y means "update the package database before you do anything else".

Answered By: larsks