alien fails to convert deb to rpm

[Austin English]

Trying to convert a custom program (it's really simple, just a set of files in /opt/program, and some shortcuts), fails when converting through alien:

austin@ubuntu:~$ rm -rf program-1.8.0/ ; sudo alien -r program-1.8.0.1-1_i386.deb
[sudo] password for austin:
Warning: Skipping conversion of scripts in package program: postinst
Warning: Use the --scripts parameter to include the scripts.
Package build failed. Here's the log of the command (cd program-1.8.0 ; rpmbuild -bb --target i386 program-1.8.0 -2.spec):
-2.spec: unknown option

An extra space is getting inserted somewhere...

I looked at the script a slight bit, removing '.$this->version."-"' from /usr/share/perl/5.10.0/Alien/Package/Rpm.pm then gives:
austin@ubuntu:~$ rm -rf program-1.8.0/ ; sudo alien -r program_1.8.0.1-1_i386.deb
Warning: Skipping conversion of scripts in package program: postinst
Warning: Use the --scripts parameter to include the scripts.
Package build failed. Here's the log of the command (cd program-1.8.0 ; rpmbuild -bb --target i386 program-2.spec):
error: failed to stat /home/austin/program-1.8.0/program-2.spec: No such file or directory

which of course fails. Perhaps I need to edit the .spec creation to remove the version as well, but I haven't tried yet. I don't know perl...

[Austin English (austinenglish)]

Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-14-generic #1 SMP Wed Apr 15 18:59:16 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Ubuntu 8.10
Alien 8.72

also tried 8.76 from author's site, same problem.

[Austin English (austinenglish)]

Contacted author to report bug upstream, he identified the problem quickly. There is a trailing space on the $version in the debian control file, which works for .deb, but chokes for rpm.

My problem is fixed, but the bug is still there. Ideally, alien should strip off trailing spaces.