Is listing nonexistant packages correct behavior?

[Simon Peter <simon.peter@gmx.de>]

Hi,

when doing 'dpkg -l <packagename>', dpkg also lists nonexistant
packages because others still mention them, which I think is really
annoying.

For example, in unstable as of today, doing 'dpkg -l kernel-image-2.4'
still produces output, even though the package is not available anymore,
since the packages dnet-common, shorewall, fiaif and shorewall-lite
still mention it.

>From dpkg's source, I see that it is inherent in how dpkg internally
builds up a dependency graph and so I ask: Is this wanted behavior?
Otherwise it might not be straight-forward to fix, but I could give it
a try.

Thanks,
Simon