Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 22:57:54 +0100 From: Daniel Bye <dan@slightlystrange.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "^L" File, needs to be Removed Message-ID: <20020717215754.GE634@catflap.home.slightlystrange.org> In-Reply-To: <002501c22dd9$27a47e40$7b01a8c0@afi> References: <002501c22dd9$27a47e40$7b01a8c0@afi>
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On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 05:30:21PM -0400, lists@brenius.com wrote: > server /etc/namedb/ # ls -la |more > total 970 > -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind - 552 Aug 8 2000 ^L > drwxr-xr-x 2 bind wheel - 10240 Jul 17 17:06 ./ > drwxr-xr-x 19 root wheel - 2560 Jul 17 17:20 ../ > > Can only be opened via (editor of choice) ?, e.g. pico ? > > The file contains a zone file, from ages ago, but the original zone file is fine and > is still there. > > Even after a quick secondary backup of the whole directory, I am hesitant to > perform a rm ? because the directory contains 100's of critical zone files. > > Any safe way to remove it and why sometimes after an ls -la the file comes up > as ^L and other times ? and only can be opened when you specify ? # rm -i -- ? The -i will at least prompt you before deleting the file, in case you change your mind or you have multiple files in the directory with a single character name. (Although, as I just found when I made a file called "^L", your shell will likely interpret it as the "clear screen" character, so you won't actually see the confirmation message from rm anyway! Should have seen that one coming...) Incidentally, the "--" trick works with less, and various others, too. It shows up in directory listings as "?" because that is the default action for ls when it encounters a non-printing character and the output stream is attached to stdout. You can use ls -B to show the characters' octal value, or ls -b to display them, where possible, as C escape characters. Dan -- Daniel Bye PGP Key: ftp://ftp.slightlystrange.org/pgpkey/dan.asc PGP Key fingerprint: 3D73 AF47 D448 C5CA 88B4 0DCF 849C 1C33 3C48 2CDC _ ASCII ribbon campaign ( ) - against HTML, vCards and X - proprietary attachments in e-mail / \ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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