(How to) Solve asymmetry in conan upload/search using pattern without user/channel

[fg68]

Using conan 1.53 on various OS:

We are utilizing a CI script to upload multiple packages belonging to a pattern which works fine for a given non-empty user/channel:

conanPattern="$packageName/*@$conanUser/$conanChannel"
conan upload -r "$remoteName" "$conanPattern" --all -c

This works fine for a user/channel like ci/testing or demo/testing.

But when trying to use this pattern for an empty user and channel (which usually defaults to _/_) this does not work. It gives a python error:

  File "....\lib\site-packages\conans\model\ref.py", line 82, in check_valid_ref
    if "*" in ref.name or "*" in ref.user or "*" in ref.channel:
TypeError: argument of type 'NoneType' is not iterable

The same is valid for conan search command:
conan search "pkgname/*@demo/testing" works without errors even if there is no package found.
conan search "pkgname/*@_/_" as well as conan search "pkgname/*@" will always issue the error given above.

How can I workaround this?

Other options I already tested:

I can try to upload pkgname/* but I do not want to include packages built with a given non-empty user/channel in that case.
It seems that I must provide the FULL pkgversion (developer version+number of commits+git hash in our case) for which I would have to check directories in the conan cache.

It does not help to specify the pkgversion only partly as * seems to work 'greedy':

conan search "pkgname/2.1.0-*"
Existing package recipes:

pkgname/2.1.0-62-g5ee391369e
pkgname/2.1.0-64-g1a8f86a3ef@user/channel

yields both versions but

conan search "pkgname/2.1.0-*@"
Existing package recipes:

pkgname/2.1.0-64-g1a8f86a3ef@user/channel

yields only packages with non-empty user/channel.

This behaviour is somehow apart from expectations with working command like

conan search "pkgname/2.1.0-62-g5ee391369e@"
Existing packages for recipe pkgname/2.1.0-62-g5ee391369e:

    Package_ID: 96e58ae8bd03427b10ed3e062442d97ec8e208d4
        [options]
        ...

The -q command requires the full pkg reference as well.

[memsharded]

Fixed in #13173, for next Conan 1.60, thanks for reporting!