diff --git a/packages/unraid-podman/unraid-podman.SlackBuild b/packages/unraid-podman/unraid-podman.SlackBuild
index 071bd12..792a1ad 100755
--- a/packages/unraid-podman/unraid-podman.SlackBuild
+++ b/packages/unraid-podman/unraid-podman.SlackBuild
@@ -28,7 +28,12 @@ REPO_ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/../.." && pwd)"
 # shellcheck source=/dev/null
 . "$REPO_ROOT/versions.env"
 
-VERSION=$(grep -oP '(?<=<!ENTITY version[[:space:]]{1,10}")[^"]+' "$REPO_ROOT/plugin/podman.plg" | head -n1)
+# sed, not `grep -oP` with a lookbehind: the lookbehind here needed a
+# variable-length quantifier ({1,10}) to match the entity's flexible
+# whitespace, but that requires PCRE2 — the PCRE1 grep ships on Slackware
+# (and many other distros) rejects it outright ("lookbehind assertion is
+# not fixed length"). sed's basic regex has no such restriction.
+VERSION=$(sed -n 's/.*<!ENTITY version[[:space:]]\+"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/p' "$REPO_ROOT/plugin/podman.plg" | head -n1)
 if [ -z "$VERSION" ]; then
   echo "!! Could not read <!ENTITY version> from $REPO_ROOT/plugin/podman.plg" >&2
   exit 1
diff --git a/scripts/lib/slackbuild-common.sh b/scripts/lib/slackbuild-common.sh
index 505817b..3627a47 100755
--- a/scripts/lib/slackbuild-common.sh
+++ b/scripts/lib/slackbuild-common.sh
@@ -68,7 +68,13 @@ sb_fetch_and_verify() {
   local dest_name="$3"
   local dest_path="$TMP/$dest_name"
 
-  echo "==> [$PRGNAM] Fetching $url"
+  # All progress/diagnostic output here must go to stderr, not stdout:
+  # callers capture this function's return value via `tarball=$(sb_fetch_and_verify ...)`,
+  # and command substitution captures everything written to stdout — a
+  # stray stdout echo above the final `echo "$dest_path"` would get
+  # concatenated into that captured value instead of just printing to the
+  # log.
+  echo "==> [$PRGNAM] Fetching $url" >&2
   curl -fL --retry 3 --retry-delay 2 -o "$dest_path" "$url"
 
   local actual_sha256
@@ -84,7 +90,7 @@ sb_fetch_and_verify() {
     exit 1
   fi
 
-  echo "==> [$PRGNAM] SHA256 verified ($actual_sha256)"
+  echo "==> [$PRGNAM] SHA256 verified ($actual_sha256)" >&2
   echo "$dest_path"
 }