On 12 Jul 2013 Prekates Alexandros wrote: > Package: apt > Version: 0.9.7.9 > Severity: normal > > Man page of apt-cache dont mentions regex on operations with pkg argument > ,except from 'search' > > But i tested in wheezy and i see that using regex with operation like show , > showpkg works.
Is there a recommended way to request a literal package name match from apt-cache show? In reportbug we are parsing the output of apt-cache show to obtain information on available packages. This does not always work correctly if the package name includes "+" or ".", see #1031924 for an example bug report. Should we just re.escape() the package name before passing it to apt-cache show? Or is there a risk of this breaking with future versions of apt (e.g., if apt is changed to address #776840)? (For reportbug I think we could also solve it by making more use of python-apt.) Thanks!
