Bug#312302: dpkg --purge unable to purge uninstalled package

[Daniel Lublin <lists@lublin.se>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.10.28
Severity: normal

I was told that "dpkg --purge foo" should be able to purge the
remaining configurationsfiles etc from the (removed, uninstalled but
nor purged) package foo. It does not do that, so is it a bug, or is it
no supposed to work?

  # dpkg -l | grep ^rc.*cupsy
  rc  libcupsys2     1.1.20final+cv Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - libs
  # dpkg --purge libcupcsys2
  dpkg - warning: ignoring request to remove libcupcsys2 which isn't installed.
  # dpkg -l | grep ^rc.*cupsy
  rc  libcupsys2     1.1.20final+cv Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - libs

I must say that the man page really does not hint about it. But I read
it somewhere, and judging from the remaining stuff /var/lib/dpkg/foo.*
it should be possible. I would be happy if it worked!

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=sv_SE.ISO-8859-1 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  dselect                     1.10.28      a user tool to manage Debian packa
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information