How do I remove configuration files for a program that's not installed?

Question

I'm basically looking for an apt-get purge for programs that are already uninstalled.

(I'm running Debian squeeze and using aptitude for package management.)

Answer 1

The following sequence will list your deinstalled packages,

dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall

You can switch that to purge with a sed replace.
Is that what you are looking for?

You can run that purge list through dpkg --set-selections and
run dpkg --purge --pending on the marked packages...

Or, something like,

for pkg in $(dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | awk '{print $1}'); 
do 
  dpkg -L $pkg; 
done

will list the files hanging around from these deinstall'ed packages.

Answer 2

In aptitude you filter just the packages that are deinstalled but still have configuration files remaining (which are in state 'c').

1. press L

2. filter for ~c

3. purge all listed packages by pressing _

Answer 3

I found this answer the simplest.

---

The following should do what you want:

aptitude purge \~c

This purges all packages with the c (package removed, configuration files still present) state flag. Flag documentation is here.