Completely eliminate packages marked as rc in Ubuntu or Debian

Removing a package is not the same as purging it. Simply removing leaves some cruft behind. If you remove packages from your Ubuntu or Debian system using

apt-get remove mypackage

you will still see it when you run a

dpkg -l

comand. And it is the case because configuration files are not erased. In order to completely remove (i.e., purge) a package you need to run

apt-get --purge remove mypackage

But what if you removed it but you did not purge it? It will always show up in your system.

If you want to get rid of all those rc-status (removed but not purged) packages in your system you can run something like:

sudo dpkg --purge `dpkg --list |grep "^rc" | cut -d " " -f 3 | xargs`