Strange Files Deletion and Renaming in Shell

There may come a time that you will discover that you have somehow created a file with a strange name that cannot be removed through conventional means. This section contains some unconventional approaches that may aid in removing such files.

Files that begin with a dash can be removed by typing

    rm ./-filename

A couple other ways that may work are

    rm -- -filename

and

    rm - -filename

Now let's suppose that we an even nastier filename. For example there can be a file with no filename. The solution is to type

    rm -i *

This executes the rm command in interactive mode. Just answer "yes" to the query to remove the nameless file and "no" to all the other queries about the rest of the files.

Another method that can be used is to obtain the inode number of the strange file using ls:


    ls -i

and then type

    find . -inum number -ok rm '{}' \;

where number is the inode number.

The -ok flag causes a confirmation prompt to be displayed. This is for your safety in case you mistypes inode number.

If you want to rename the file with the strange name, following modification to the find command works:

    find . -inum number -ok mv '{}' new_filename \;

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Last modified: August 10, 2009