On 2016-06-16 18:36 +0000, Bruce Gates wrote: > What is the functional difference between dpkg --get-selections and dpkg > --get-selections "*"?
>From the manpage: ,---- | --get-selections [package-name-pattern...] | Get list of package selections, and write it to stdout. | Without a pattern, non-installed packages (i.e. those which | have been previously purged) will not be shown. `---- In most cases the output will be the same, though. > It seems to me that the first command would find all packages anyway, > making the wildcard erroneous...perhaps I'm mistaken? There is a difference if you have selected currently purged packages for installation, e.g. with "dpkg --set-selections": ,---- | # apt-get install dselect && dselect update && echo "ed install" | dpkg --set-selections | [...] | # diff -u <(dpkg --get-selections) <(dpkg --get-selections "*") | --- /dev/fd/63 2016-06-16 19:36:02.856792917 +0000 | +++ /dev/fd/62 2016-06-16 19:36:02.856792917 +0000 | @@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ | dselect install | e2fslibs:i386 install | e2fsprogs install | +ed install | fakeroot install | file install | findutils install `---- Old versions of dpkg also used to keep information about packages in the status file after purging them, but this was changed in dpkg 1.15.4¹. Cheers, Sven ¹. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=472208