Filenames in the apt cache directory

Question

Why the packages in the directory

/var/cache/apt/archives/

have names like: *x11proto-damage-Dev_1%3a1.2.0-1_all.deb* where the "strange" in this case is "%3". In fact, if I download it manually from the firefox the package has the name "normal".

thanks

Answer 1

I think it's because the cache contains the URL specific scheme of representation characters, %3a is ASCII code 3A in hexadecimal, which is character ":" and if you query that installed package eg with command dpkg -s x11proto-damage-dev | grep Version you can see that it contains ":"

Version: 1:1.2.0-1

So indeed, that ":" is encoded as %3a ...