This should bomb out right away,
with "E: Unknown pattern type: h",
instead of doing all that work first:

# aptitude search ~h
[  0%] Reading package lists
[100%] Reading package lists
[  0%] Building dependency tree
[100%] Building dependency tree
[  0%] Reading state information
[ 11%] Reading state information
[  0%] Reading extended state information
[  0%] Initializing package states
[  0%] Building tag database
[100%] Building tag database
E: Unknown pattern type: h

(Made with
# script /tmp/m
...
# tr \\r \\n < /tmp/m | col |sed /^$/d
)