Bug#716763: apt: Man page of apt-cache dont mentions regex on operations with pkg argument , except from 'search'

[Nis Martensen <nis.martensen@mailbox.org>]

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!