.deb pakage querys

[Rich Rudnick]

Robert Holtzman wrote:
> In distros using RPM package management a simple "rpm -q <package name>" 
> reveals whether a package is installed and what version it is. I've been 
> checking man pages for aptitude and apt-get and can't find the same 
> capability. Aptitude has an option which gives package information but 
> doesn't seem to indicate whether the package is installed. "Aptitude 
> search <package name>" seems to show whether the package is installed but 
> gives no version information.
> 
> Can someone tell me what I'm missing?
> 

dpkg -l pkgname . pkgname can be a file glob, like '*apache*' to see all
 packages with apache in the name. Use single quote marks to avoid
having the shell expand the glob before dpkg -l sees it.