topic Re: Removing special characters file in Operating System - HP-UX

Removing special characters file

dictum9 — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:08:11 GMT

Any idea what this is and how to remove it?

# ls -dalb ???
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Nov 2 10:57 \177\177\177

Re: Removing special characters file

Jayakrishnan G Naik — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:23:05 GMT

Hi

If this is unwanted file use rm with absolute path. Have you tried using absolute path? If any error, try using double quotes for the filename.

rm /dir/\177\177\177

rm /dir/"\177\177\177"

Regards
Jayakrishnan G Naik

Re: Removing special characters file

James R. Ferguson — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:36:12 GMT

Hi:

You can always remove a file from a filesystem by using its inode. Remember that an inode number is only unique within a filesystem.

# cd /path && ls -il

...[note the inode value]

# find . -xdev -type f -inum -exec rm -i {} +

The '-xdev' argument insures that we don't cross (out of) the mountpoint and clobber a file in another filesystem with the same inode number.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Removing special characters file

Bijeesh — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:45:38 GMT

>>Any idea what this is<<
It may be created by doing something like
#touch ????
Here the ? mark appeared while you may use the delete key or backspace key which is not properly set for the terminal.

Re: Removing special characters file

dictum9 — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:04:00 GMT

Removing by inode worked, thanks.

Re: Removing special characters file

Dennis Handly — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 07:41:34 GMT

>Any idea what this is and how to remove it? \177\177\177

This is a filename with three DELs. With my stty setup, I can just type that to rm.
$ touch ^?^?^?
$ ll ^?^?^?
-rw-rw-r-- 0 Nov 4 01:39
$ ll -b ^?^?^?
-rw-rw-r-- 0 Nov 4 01:39 \177\177\177

Re: Removing special characters file

Doug O'Leary — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:59:01 GMT

Hey;

You should remember the inode trick... that, and how do you get rid of an empty directory named

/home/${user}/-delete-me

are good interview questions. At least they get asked on every interview I'm running.

Doug