Nasty mess installing sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> writes:

>> So, can anyone recommend some method to get past this, and get the
>> pkgs fully installed?
>
>
> Purging them all and re-installing would probably be the quickest way. Ric

OK, thanks for that... Wish I'd known to look for `purge' in man
aptitude. I breezed right over it like a doodoo.

Still not finding concise information about how to interpret the
output of `aptitude'... I'm sure its equally obvious but I need a clue
with the search strings.

After purge I still see things that puzzle.  Like the uppercase A and
the fact that `sendmail' is still not installed.  

p   sendmail 
i A sendmail-base
i   sendmail-bin
i A sendmail-cf
p   sendmail-doc