Dan Ritter <d...@randomstring.org> writes: > Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: >> On 21 de dezembro de 2018 20:24, aprekates wrote: >> > In a new installed system with Debian 9.6 >> > >> > $ dpkg -l >> > >> > will list only packages with 'ii' state and a couple of 'rc'. >> > >> > But if i run: >> > >> > $ dpkg -l w* >> > >> > i will get a dozen also of 'un' packages. >> > >> > So i dont understand the logic of altering the output when >> > i use a pattern . I would expect to see only 'ii' packages starting >> > from the letter 'w' . >> > >> > Also i dont understand why in a new system dpkg would know >> > anything about uninstalled packages! >> >> dpkg -l w* >> will be expanded by the shell (if there is any file starting with w in the >> current directory). >> >> Have you tried >> dpkg -l 'w*' > > Let's see: > > dpkg -l w* > dpkg-query: no packages found matching webplot.txt
<snip> It's important to keep in mind that if there are no files matching the wildcard expansion, the w* is passed as-is to the command. So if I create an empty directory, enter the directory, and snowball:525$ dpkg -l w* Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-============================-====================-============-============= un w-bassman <none> <none> (no descripti <long list snipped> snowball:525$ touch w snowball:526$ dpkg -l w* dpkg-query: no packages found matching w Yes, the OP does want in general to escape the w* as 'w*' (or other methods), but his output is completely reasonable, especially in a fresh install