[Aptitude-devel] Bug#775671: aptitude: output of 'aptitude search' truncated when piped/redirected

[Axel Beckert]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.8.2-1
Severity: normal
Tags: confirmed
Control: submitter -1 "U.Mutlu" <for-gmane at mutluit.com>
Control: found -1 0.6.11-1

The following bug report was receicved on the aptitude-devel list at
https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/aptitude-devel/2015-January/004716.html:

---8<---
why is the output of this
  aptitude search coin

different than when redirecting the output to a file or a pipe:
  aptitude search coin >t.t
  aptitude search coin | less -Sn

The difference is that the result gets cutted when piping/redirecting.
The question is: why such an inconsistent and unintuitive behavior?
--->8---

I was able to reproduce this on Wheezy as well as on Sid.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.8
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (909, 'stable'), (902, 'stable-updates'), (901, 'proposed-updates'), (900, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.8.2-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            0.9.7.9+deb7u6
ii  libboost-iostreams1.49.0  1.49.0-3.2
ii  libc6                     2.13-38+deb7u4
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-3.4
ii  libept1.4.12              1.0.9
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.7.2-5
ii  libncursesw5              5.9-10
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.10-0.2
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.13-1+deb7u1
ii  libstdc++6                4.7.2-5
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9-10
ii  libxapian22               1.2.12-2
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.7.dfsg-13

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.45
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.8.2-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.7

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
ii  debtags  1.10.1
pn  tasksel  <none>

-- no debconf information