1.1 -> 1.2 dselect/dpkg breaks

[siemers@bms.com (Nathan O. Siemers)]

After a trouble-free complete 1.2 install on a new laptop, I began the
process of upgrading my 1.1 box. dpkg and dselect have broken after
the list of available packages is updated:

<log>
Uncompressing
/u/dna/usr1/people/nathan/src/debian/stable/binary-i386/Packages.gz
... done.
Replacing available packages info, using packages-main.
Information about 716 package(s) was updated.
Uncompressing
/u/dna/usr1/people/nathan/src/debian/contrib/binary-i386/Packages.gz
... done.
Updating available packages info, using packages-ctb.
Information about 37 package(s) was updated.
Uncompressing
/u/dna/usr1/people/nathan/src/debian/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.gz
... done.
Updating available packages info, using packages-nf.
Information about 108 package(s) was updated.
Update OK.  Hit RETURN.  
dselect: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line
15778 package `zlib1':
 empty value for version
</log>

There's no big syntax error that I can see (with my uneducated eyes)
in that area of "available", and now dpkg won't run because of the
problem.  How do I work around this? Delete available for now? Thanks
for any help!

nathan

--

Nathan Siemers - Research Investigator, Bioinformatics
Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute
K14-06, P.O. Box 4000, Princeton, NJ 08543-4000; (609) 252-6568