Comment 4 for bug 216292

Thanks for taking the time to report this. Though I can follow your arguments (also on the Debian tracker) I think this is not a bug, as it is clear by the aptitude man page, that "-d" is directly connected to a command line option. The man pages describes "COMMAND-LINE ACTIONS" first, directly followed by the following text:

"The following options may be used to modify the behavior of the actions described above"

So the command line options described (like -d) are meant for using with the actions described above.

Thanks again for taking the time to investigate this. Maybe an upstream ticket would help updating man page and help text. (And: Please consider using a polite language when responding to people :) )