Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 4 Mar 1996 13:42:13 -0700
From:      Tony Jones <tony@rtd.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: How to delete strange filename
Message-ID:  <199603042042.NAA05664@seagull.rtd.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.960304091215.11752A-100000@thurston.eng.umd.edu> you wrote:

: When I get some really strange filename, I write up a really short C 
: program with one call to unlink("really_strange_filename").  It's worked 
: in every case.

Sometimes with uprintable characters, it can be hard to determine the 
exact name. I usually stumble upon this every few months on some
Unix system or another.

In these cases I usually do:

% /bin/rm -i ./*  (assuming your name doesn't start woth a . of course)

It's advised to use /bin/rm, or \rm (in csh). 
If rm is aliased to 'rm -f', -f -i == -f !!)

If you are sure of a prefix, you can specify that in the rexexp to cut down 
the # of possibilities you have to iterate through.

If you are worried, you can first verify that -i works as expected:
% touch foo1 foo2
% rm -i foo[12]

This would have fixed the original posters problem too, but is clearly
the proverbial sledgehammer

tony



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199603042042.NAA05664>