Bug#137351: dpkg -l cut versions and make false bug report info

[Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.9.19
Severity: normal

Hello dpkg developers,

The way dpkg -l cut columns may generated wrong versions in bug reports:
An example

yellowpig% COLUMNS=80 dpkg -l libopenal0 | grep libopenal0
ii  libopenal0     0.2001061600-2 OpenAL is a portable library for 3D spatiali

So I have version 0.2001061600-2 ? Wrong:

yellowpig% COLUMNS=130 dpkg -l libopenal0 | grep libopenal0
ii  libopenal0                 0.2001061600-2.1           OpenAL is a portable library for 3D spatialized audio.

In fact I have version 0.2001061600-2.1 !

There is a similar problem in potato with proftpd, it loks like version
1.2.0pre10-2.0

yellowpig% COLUMNS=80 dpkg -l proftpd | grep proftpd
ii  proftpd        1.2.0pre10-2.0 Versatile, virtual-hosting FTP daemon

But in fact I have

yellowpig% COLUMNS=130 dpkg -l proftpd | grep proftpd
ii  proftpd                    1.2.0pre10-2.0potato1      Versatile, virtual-hosting FTP daemon


If you really want dpkg -l to cut important fields like package name or
version number, please use a ">" terminator to make it clear it is not
finished, like in

i  proftpd        1.2.0pre10-2.0>Versatile, virtual-hosting FTP daemon

Kind regards,

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux yellowpig 2.2.19 #1 Tue Apr 24 20:02:21 CEST 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=french, LC_CTYPE=french

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  libc6                    2.2.5-3         GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libncurses5              5.2.20020112a-3 Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2   1:2.95.4-1      The GNU stdc++ library

-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

  FHS 5.3: As of the date of this release of the standard, system crash were
  not supported under Linux.