apt 0.8.16 aptitude 0.6.4 If I search for a package name (~n) then using '$' should prevent -dbg -doc -multi. So I would consider the following results wrong: $ aptitude search "~ngstreamer(.+)-(ffmpeg|plugins-(ugly|bad))$" i gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg - FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer p gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-dbg - FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer (debug symbols i gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad - GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set p gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-dbg - GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set (debu p gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-doc - GStreamer documentation for plugins from t p gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multi - GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set (Mult p gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multi - GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set (Mult i gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly - GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set p gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-dbg - GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set (deb p gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-doc - GStreamer documentation for plugins from t
However, using the same regex with apt-cache yields the correct result: $ apt-cache search "^gstreamer(.+)-(ffmpeg|plugins-(ugly|bad|good))$" gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg - FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad - GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly - GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set gstreamer0.10-plugins-good - GStreamer plugins from the "good" set The only way I can get aptitude to perform properly is by using the following regex: $ aptitude search "~ngstreamer(.+)-(ffmpeg$|plugins-(ugly$|bad$|good$))" Which I would consider as wrong. Another example, where aptitude is right and apt-cache is wrong: $ apt-cache search "^mp\w*r$" mp3blaster - Full-screen console mp3 and Ogg Vorbis player mp3roaster - A Perl hack for burning audio CDs out of MP3/OGG/FLAC/WAV files mplayer2 - next generation movie player for Unix-like systems mplayer - movie player for Unix-like systems "mplayer2" should have been excluded. $ aptitude search "~n^mp\w*r$" p mp3blaster - Full-screen console mp3 and Ogg Vorbis pla p mp3roaster - A Perl hack for burning audio CDs out of M i mplayer - movie player for Unix-like systems For package names, ~n or ?name with aptitude is unnecessary, I used it in the previous examples for clarification. I've read man 7 regex and I'm fairly sure those regexes are fine but many instances give wrong results. An application that gives expected results is grep, in particular grep -E. Is this a known issue, or where am I going wrong?
