Conda list information source?

[Skip Montanaro]

I noticed that a couple environments of mine have invalid channel
listings in the .../conda-meta/*.json files. In particular, the
channel is listed as null. I don't know how that happened. Still, the
conda list command generates correct output (properly naming
channels). Is the conda-meta directory write-only, never consulted by
other Conda commands? If so, where does conda list get the package
details it uses?

Thx,

Skip Montanaro