Can we have multiple files/directories with same name in a directory

directoryfilenamesfilesystems

Why I am seeing two files (directories) in the same directory with same name ‘storage’? The inode numbers are different.

root@OpenWrt:/# fsck.ext4 -p /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1: clean, 2213/979200 files, 2026329/3912206 blocks
root@OpenWrt:/#
root@OpenWrt:/# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
root@OpenWrt:/# cd /mnt
root@OpenWrt:/mnt# ls -l
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jan  1  1970 etc
drwx------    2 root     root         16384 Jan 31 21:16 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x    9 root     root          4096 Apr 14  2018 storage
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jan 20  2018 storage
drwxr-xr-x   11 root     root          4096 Apr  3  2018 upper
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jan  1  1970 work
root@OpenWrt:/mnt# ls -li
 261121 drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jan  1  1970 etc
     11 drwx------    2 root     root         16384 Jan 31 21:16 lost+found
 391681 drwxr-xr-x    9 root     root          4096 Apr 14  2018 storage
 783361 drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jan 20  2018 storage
 130561 drwxr-xr-x   11 root     root          4096 Apr  3  2018 upper
 522241 drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          4096 Jan  1  1970 work
root@OpenWrt:/mnt#

Best Answer

Files in the same directory that look visually similar, on a filesystem that’s not corrupted, will have different inodes and filenames. In this case, there appears to be trailing whitespace. Inspect the filenames by using ls -Q or ls -b. You can manipulate (rename or delete) the one you want by using find with the -inum predicate to specify the inode number, or use shell globs with interactive prompting; something like:

for f in storage*; do printf 'removing: —>%b<—\n' "$f"; rm -i -- "$f"; done
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