pkg/42197 - pkg_alternatives fixes

[Louis Guillaume <louis%zabrico.com@localhost>]

Hi,

A while ago I come up with a patch for pkg_alternatives that relieves 
the dependency on a non-ascii character ( 0xac ), which causes problems 
in some locales on some systems (like OS X).

The patch didn't come through send-pr well (because of the Latin-1 
character) and ended up in gnats all mangled. So I gzipped a patch and 
attached it to the PR message, which means that, at a glance, it's not 
obviously a patch (but it is!)

It seems this PR doesn't get any attention. Can someone please review 
the patch and at least send some critique or suggestion for improvement? 
Otherwise can this be applied? Maybe there is a problem someone found 
that hasn't been reported?

This is probably a low priority but if someone can look at and maybe 
provide some feedback on the patch it would be great.

Thanks,

Louis