Bug#738880: apt-get uses globbing but reports regex for selecting packages + documentation issues

[Michael Vogt <mvo@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:09:16PM +0100, rpr nospam wrote:
> Package: apt
> Version: 0.9.15
> Severity: normal

Thanks for your bugreport.
 
> Dear Maintainer, here is an example which demonstrates this bug:
> 
> $ sudo apt-get remove 'libre?f?ice.*'
[..]
> The above commands show that the packages selected by apt-get
> (libreoffice.org-calc and libreoffice.org-writer) didn't match
> libre?f?ice.* regex.
> 
> Obviously, apt-get interprets libre?f?ice.* as a glob pattern. So,
> instead of reporting
>   Note, selecting 'libreoffice.org-writer' for regex 'libre?f?ice.*'
> it should report
>   Note, selecting 'libreoffice.org-writer' for glob 'libre?f?ice.*'

Indeed, this is very misleading. We fixed this is git, but unfortunatly
it requires a ABI change, so its queued for now and won't be part of
the next upload (only the next one that breaks the ABI).

As a short-term fix, we can disable the fnmatch(glob) style matching
until the next ABI break as well. Right now it will first try glob,
then regex but given the misleading message this is probably a bad
idea.

> I came about this bug after experiencing the issue described on
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/02/msg00639.html
> 
> I'd say that the current apt-get manpage should be expanded and
> clarified in regard to matching package names.
[..]

Right, the current manpage is not accurate enough. I will look at
this next.

Cheers,
 Michael