apt-get purge

miserable me.
docs in linux are not very clear, it is hhhhard to get the idea from
the first read.

i.e.

man man

The following conventions apply to the SYNOPSIS section and can be used
as a guide in other sections.

bold text type exactly as shown.
italic text replace with appropriate argument.
[-abc] any or all arguments within [ ] are optional.
-a|-b options delimited by | cannot be used together.
argument ... argument is repeatable.
[expression] ... entire expression within [ ] is repeatable.

it DID NOT say any thing bout curly brackets which I was faced by in
reading the apt-get docs. notice;

SYNOPSIS
apt-get [-hvs] [-o=config string] [-c=file] {update | upgrade |
dselect-upgrade | install pkg... | remove pkg... |
source pkg... | build-dep pkg... | check | clean | autoclean}

how on earth is any reader expected to know something with out ready
some proper expiation?

the commands in the curly brackets are not optional but they are a
must, those commands can be followed immediately by any of the OPTIONS
listed below before the "pkg..." part, i.e to remove a package totally
"include all its guts" do this
$apt-get remove --purge package_with_guts.

man, I need somebody to pray for me ....

Try a "dpkg --purge gsl-bin".

The man pages vary. Some are good, some aren't so good. But the man pages aren's meant as full docs, they're only supposed to be summary-type docs and/or a reminder of various command line switches.

My favorite gripe about the man pages? The lack of examples. Some of them have an "example" section which typically shows a program's common tasks/usage. Those examples are worth their weight in gold!