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

    rm -- -filename

    rm - -filename

    rm -i *

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

    ls -i

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

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 \;

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20160704 : nfs - How do I rename files with strange characters ( Unix & Linux Stack Exchange )
• 200102 : linux - How to remove invalid characters from filenames \ ( Server Fault )

Old News ;-)

[Jul 04, 2016] nfs - How do I rename files with strange characters

Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

have file with greek or cyrillic characters.

It is not owned by me, but by the web server user (www).

I cannot use the shell as the web server user (www) or as root, but I've used a script (executed by the web server user) to set the modbits directory it is in to 777 and the file itself to 666.

I am not able to rename (or delete this) file. Even using the inode and using find fails:
$ ls -i1
19120017 Idezbox - коробка.jpeg

$ find . -inum 19120017 -exec mv -i {} sane \;
mv: cannot move `./Idezbox - коробка.jpeg' to `sane': No such file or directory

Wildcards fail:
$ mv Idezbox*.jpeg sane
mv: cannot move `Idezbox - коробка.jpeg' to `sane': No such file or directory

The following Perl-script also fails:
find . -type f -print0 | \
perl -n0e '$new = $_; if($new =~ s/[^[:ascii:]]/x/g) {
print("Renaming $_ to $new\n");
rename($_, $new);
}'

It prints out:
Renaming Idezbox - коробка.jpeg to Idezbox - xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.jpeg

but the subsequent rename command has no effect.
However, note that there are 7 greek characters and 14 "x"-es.

Moving to the directory above and trying to delete "Junk":
$ rm -riv Junk
rm: descend into directory `Junk'? yes
rm: cannot remove `Junk/Idezbox - коробка.jpeg': No such file or directory

Some requested output:
$ mount | grep "on /ifi/asgard/k00"
asgard:/ifi/asgard/k00 on /ifi/asgard/k00 type nfs (rw,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,hard,intr,addr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)

$ df .
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
asgard:/ifi/asgard/k00
104857600 53201568 51656032 51% /ifi/asgard/k00
$ ls -al
total 88
drwxrwxrwx 2 www ifiweb 4096 2014-08-11 14:16 .
drwxrwsrwx 14 inf5270 inf5270 4096 2014-08-11 14:15 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 www ifiweb 35176 2012-04-14 13:38 Idezbox - коробка.jpeg
-rwxrw-r-- 1 gisle ifi-a 139 2014-08-11 14:15 perl-rename.sh

$ who ami i
gisle pts/122 2014-08-11 11:37 (safir.ifi.uio.no:13.0)

After having read through all comments and answers (thanks everybody!) I no longer think this is just about escaping or quoting the cyrillic characters. I need to look into the NFS angle.

Edit 2015-10-02:

The problem turned out to be NFS-related. Since the file was created directly on a NFS-mounted volume, which I accessed from another computer, nothing worked. Logging directly in on the server as root allowed a sysadmin (I am a mere user on this particular system and can't do this) to delete the file (using some standard method to escape the Greek characters). Kudos to G-Man for putting me on the right track (in a comment). If G-Man is still around and converts his comment into an answer, I'll accept it.

/ nfs / character-encoding

shareimprove this question

edited Oct 2 '15 at 2:10

asked Aug 11 '14 at 11:30

Free Radical
16229

1

What about vidir from moreutils? – MadTux Aug 11 '14 at 11:37

2

Can you edit the question to show the output of mount, df . and ls -A. – richard Aug 11 '14 at 11:44

3

@FreeRadical Then you must have some alternate problem as well, it is not a simple "how to quote"-problem. – peterh Aug 11 '14 at 11:59

2

Can you add the output of mount, df . and ls -A to you question. They are probably of relevance. – richard Aug 11 '14 at 12:01

3

Did you create the file from your RHEL computer? I suspect that the problem has to do with the interface between your client and the NFS server. It may be necessary to login directly to the server to manipulate the file, or at least access it from a workstation running a different OS. (You know, the one whose name begins with 'W'.) – G-Man Aug 11 '14 at 17:02

show 15 more comments

5 Answers

active oldest votes

up vote

1

down vote

accepted

Your question indicates that this problem file is on an NFS-mounted filesystem, and nothing you do from your RHEL client successfully touches the file. This suggests that the problem has to do with the interface between your client and the NFS server. It may be necessary to login directly to the server to manipulate the file, or at least access it from a workstation running a different OS.

linux - How to remove invalid characters from filenames \

Server Fault

One way would be with sed:
mv 'file' $(echo 'file' | sed -e 's/[^A-Za-z0-9._-]/_/g')

Replace file with your filename, of course. This will replace anything that isn't a letter, number, period, underscore, or dash with an underscore. You can add or remove characters to keep as you like, and/or change the replacement character to anything else, or nothing at all.

Following answers at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2124010/grep-regex-to-match-non-ascii-characters, You can use:

rename -n 's/[^\x00-\x7F]//g' *

where * matches the files you want to rename. If you want to do it over multiple directories, you can do something like:

find . -exec rename 's/[^\x00-\x7F]//g' "{}" \;

You can use the -n argument to rename to do a dry run, and see what would be changed, without changing it.

Recommended Links

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

Top articles

Sites

Finding World Writable, Abandoned and other Abnormal Files

filename - Strange file exist with name ' (star, asterisk)' - Ask Ubuntu

ls command and coloring directory listings

linux - How to remove invalid characters from filenames - Server Fault

Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces (Windows)

Filename - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

Last modified: March, 12, 2019