File Deletion – How to Delete a File with Non-Printing Characters in Filename

filenamesrmspecial characters

I somehow managed to create a file that doesn't seem to have a filename. I found some information regarding how to get more details of the file in the following thread.

However, I tried some of the suggestions listed and can't seem to delete the file. I'm not sure what I did to create it, but it happened while trying to copy an xml file.

Some info on the file is as follows;

> ls -lb
total 296
-rw-r--r--   1 voyager  endeavor  137627 Jan 12 12:49 \177

> file *
:               XML document

> ls -i
 417777

I tried to find using the inum switch and then pipe that to rm as that seemed like the most foolproof way of getting rid of it. However, the example given at the bottom of the thread linked below failed for me. Example was:

> find -inum 41777 -exec ls -al {} \;
find: illegal option -- i
find: [-H | -L] path-list predicate-list

so I tried using the path list first like the following, but that didn't work either:

> find . -inum 41777 -exec ls -al {} \;

I'm not sure what the non-printable character \177 is or how I can pass that to an rm command, but I really want to make sure I don't mess up any other files/directories in my attempt to delete this file.

Best Answer

The file has a name, but it's made of non-printable characters. If you use ksh93, bash, zsh, mksh or FreeBSD sh, you can try to remove it by specifying its non-printable name. First ensure that the name is right with: ls -ld $'\177' If it shows the right file, then use rm: rm $'\177'

Another (a bit more risky) approach is to use rm -i -- * . With the -i option rm requires confirmation before removing a file, so you can skip all files you want to keep but the one.

Good luck!

Related Question