Another nice cleanup from Larry. This adds a new last_char_is() function and

uses it to avoid possible buffer underruns whn strlen is zero, and avoid the
possible space-hogging inline of strlen() in several cases.
 -Erik

archival/dpkg.c

@@ -583,7 +583,7 @@ static int status_merge(void *status, package_t *pkgs)
 	 */
 	if ((fin = fopen(statusfile, "r")) != NULL) {
 		while (((line = get_line_from_file(fin)) != NULL) && !feof(fin)) { 
-			line[strlen(line) - 1] = '\0'; /* trim newline */
+			chomp(line); /* trim newline */
 			/* If we see a package header, find out if it's a package
 			 * that we have processed. if so, we skip that block for
 			 * now (write it at the end).