Deleting a directory with no name

[Jim Mulshine]

Does anyone know of a way to delete a directory that has no (visible) name? See what I mean...
# cd /
# ll | head -2
total 256
drwxrwxrwx 2 root sys 8192 Oct 27 09:28
#

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Jim,

You can *VERY CAREFULLY* do an "rm -rfi *" and respond no to everything but the blank directory.


Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson]

First, do an ls -b to display the non-printable characters in octal. That may give you a way to create a wildcard pattern for the rm command. Plan B. Do a rm -i * and answer 'n' (No) for the files displayed until you get to the mystery file. Answer 'y' (yes) for that one and then you can enter Cntl-C for the next file prompt to terminate the rm command. Man rm first and be vewry, vewry careful.

[harry d brown jr]

do a "ll | head -2 | od -bc".

I created a directory CTRL-A and it shows up like this:

# ll | head -2 | od -bc
0000000 t o t a l 2 5 8 0 \n d r w x r
164 157 164 141 154 040 062 065 070 060 012 144 162 167 170 162
0000020 w x r w x 2 r o o t
167 170 162 167 170 040 040 040 062 040 162 157 157 164 040 040
0000040 s y s
040 040 040 040 040 163 171 163 040 040 040 040 040 040 040 040
0000060 9 6 N o v 4 1
040 040 040 040 040 071 066 040 116 157 166 040 040 064 040 061
0000100 0 : 3 6 001 \n
060 072 063 066 040 001 012
0000107
#

Note the 001 on the last line, that's a ctrl-A.

rm -ri *

CAREFUL though, it's saying to remove files and directories, but PROMPT first. The CTRL-A directory prompted me TWICE to delete it:

# rm -ir *
directory : ? (y/n) y
: ? (y/n) y
OLDsulog: ? (y/n) q

At the OLDsulog file I CTRL-C'd out of rm

live free or die
harry

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Jim,

Do an
rmdir -i *.*
And make sure you reply NO to everything BUT this entry.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Pramod_4]

You can do "rmdir -i *" and type yes when you get prompted like the following:
: ? (y/n)

Thanks,
Pramod

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Jim,

# ls -i /dir
find the inode number in the above command

# find /dir -inum xxxx -xdev -exec rmdir {} \;

Robert-Jan.

[Kevin Wright]

ls -li should give you the inode. find /dir -inum <#> |xargs rm.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Oops, I meant rmdir -i * rather than rm -i * but the same applies and do the ls -b first.

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Do you run CDE ? Try to change the name from the file manager (dtfile).

[Umapathy S]

Another way is
ls >/tmp/tmp.out

open tmp.out and see the files. Remove all the entries you want to keep and leave out only those to delete.

add rm infront with awk and run that as a script.

HTH,
Umapathy

[Mark Greene_1]

an ls -l |cat -v will show the control character in a format that you can duplicate on the keyboard.

For example, I did a mkdir and enterd a control-T. I can display it like this:

ls -l |cat -v
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 2 mgreene general 96 Nov 4 10:47 ^T

and now I an use rmdir to remove it by entering a control-V then a control-T and pressing enter.

mark

[curt larson_1]

first you can try to make the name visible

ll -i | head -2 | vis
i'd see just how many invisible names there are first.
then you can use wildcards
rmdir -i *

or use find

find . -inum numberFromUsingll-i -exec rmdir {} \;

of course by using rmdir, the directory has to be empty

[Jim Mulshine]

Thank you everyone for your (very) fast responses to my question...problem solved! /Jim