Package: aptitude Version: 0.8.13-2+b1 Severity: wishlist This should bomb out right away, with "E: Unknown pattern type: h", instead of doing all that work first:
# aptitude search ~h [ 0%] Reading package lists [100%] Reading package lists [ 0%] Building dependency tree [100%] Building dependency tree [ 0%] Reading state information [ 11%] Reading state information [ 0%] Reading extended state information [ 0%] Initializing package states [ 0%] Building tag database [100%] Building tag database E: Unknown pattern type: h (Made with # script /tmp/m ... # tr \\r \\n < /tmp/m | col |sed /^$/d )