Jeff Johnson:
This simply is not true.
What is not true? Could you please include sentence you are referring to?
Whatever "rpm format" means, historically RPM itself has
always gone to some lengths not to expose E: to users to simplify the endless fog of
dependency hell clutter.
Rpm does not print epoch in in standard --query output only in --info mode.
$ rpm -q bind-libs
bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64
$ rpm -qi bind-libs
Name : bind-libs
Epoch : 32
Version : 9.9.4
Release : 61.el7
Architecture: x86_64
...
It understands N-V-R.A or N-E:V-R.A as an argument but not E:N-V-R.A.
$ rpm -q bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64 bind-libs-32:9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64
32:bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64
bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64
bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64
package 32:bind-libs-9.9.4-61.el7.x86_64 is not installed
--
Michael Mráka
System Management Engineering, Red Hat