diff --git a/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish b/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
index a582c8c67..7e014aa50 100644
--- a/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
+++ b/share/functions/__fish_print_apt_packages.fish
@@ -12,20 +12,23 @@ function __fish_print_apt_packages
         # Do not generate the cache as apparently sometimes this is slow.
         # http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=547550
         # (It is safe to use `sed -r` here as we are guaranteed to be on a GNU platform
-        # if apt-cache was found. Using unicode reserved range in `fish/tr` and the
-        # little-endian bytecode equivalent in `sed`. Supports localization.)
+        # if apt-cache was found.)
+        # Uses the UTF-8/ASCII record separator (0x1A) character.
         #
         # Note: This can include "Description:" fields which we need to include,
         # "Description-en_GB" (or another locale code) fields which we need to include
         # as well as "Description-md5" fields which we absolutely do *not* want to include
         # The regex doesn't allow numbers, so unless someone makes a hash algorithm without a number in the name,
         # we're safe. (yes, this should absolutely have a better format).
-        apt-cache --no-generate show '.*'(commandline -ct)'.*' 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\xee\x80\x80\x0a/g' | tr -d \n | tr -s \uE000 \n | uniq
+        #
+        # aptitude has options that control the output formatting, but is orders of magnitude slower
+        #
+        # sed could probably do all of the heavy lifting here, but would be even less readable
+        apt-cache --no-generate show '.*'(commandline -ct)'.*' 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\x1a\n/g' | string join "" | string replace --all --regex \x1a+ \n | uniq
         return 0
     else
         set -l packages (dpkg --get-selections | string replace -fr '(\S+)\s+install' "\$1" | string match -e (commandline -ct))
-        apt-cache --no-generate show $packages 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\xee\x80\x80\x0a/g' | tr -d \n | tr -s \uE000 \n | uniq
-
+        apt-cache --no-generate show $packages 2>/dev/null | sed -r '/^(Package|Description-?[a-zA-Z_]*):/!d;s/Package: (.*)/\1\t/g;s/Description-?[^:]*: (.*)/\1\x1a\n/g' | string join "" | string replace --all --regex \x1a+ \n | uniq
         return 0
     end
 end