Description of problem:

Application of a copy-and-pasted patch file fails:

$ patch --normal --verbose --input patch mysql_backup.sh
Hunk #1 succeeded at 15.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 109.
patch: **** `>' expected at line 35 of patch

"SOB"

Okay, the problems seems to be that a link that looks like
'>' in the patch file is considered unfriendly. It possibly
looked once like '> ' or '>\t', but copy & paste may have
mangled it.

Workaround is to manually edit the patch file and add spaces
or tabs.

A quick look at the source of patch-2.5.9 (through Google code search)
shows that the error occurs around here, though I have trouble 
extrating semantics out of this compact C style. The condition 

  (buf[0] != '>' || (buf[1] != ' ' && buf[1] != '\t'))

indicates that '> ' is acceptable while '>' is not.

It might be useful to relax this apparently fascist attitude to input.



for (i++; i<=p_end; i++) {
	    chars_read = get_line ();
	    if (chars_read == (size_t) -1)
	      {
		p_end = i - 1;
		return -1;
	      }
	    if (!chars_read)
	      fatal ("unexpected end of file in patch at line %s",
		     format_linenum (numbuf0, p_input_line));
	    if (buf[0] != '>' || (buf[1] != ' ' && buf[1] != '\t'))
	      fatal ("`>' expected at line %s of patch",
		     format_linenum (numbuf0, p_input_line));
	    chars_read -= 2 + (i == p_end && incomplete_line ());
	    p_len[i] = chars_read;
	    if (! (p_line[i] = savebuf (buf + 2, chars_read))) {
		p_end = i-1;
		return -1;
	    }
	    p_Char[i] = '+';
	}