From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Feb 5 15:45: 8 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74A2037B401 for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 15:45:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net (mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.48]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1971F43F3F for ; Wed, 5 Feb 2003 15:45:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from walterk1@earthlink.net) Received: from user-0cal9lv.cable.mindspring.com ([24.170.166.191] helo=earthlink.net) by mallard.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18gZDz-0002vD-00 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org; Wed, 05 Feb 2003 15:45:03 -0800 Message-ID: <3E41A24E.9090607@earthlink.net> Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 18:46:22 -0500 From: Walter User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Questions Subject: Re: handling non-printable characters in file names Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Nathan Kinkade wrote: > On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:28:57PM -0500, Walter wrote: >> Leaving out the details, I need to know how to >>navigate directories and remove files that use non- >>printable characters in their names. du and ls show >>me they're there, but I can't figure out how to make >>cd work, or rm either. Fwiw, the non-printable char >>is \225. Lynx was not able to see the directory >>either, but maybe because it began with a ". " - >>I don't know. > > Generally, there are several things to try with difficult file names: > > 1) Try quoting the spuriously named files (try double and single) > 2) Add a ./ in front of the filename > 3) Try letting the shell expand the filename for you by typing the first > few characters and then pressing the Tab key. > 4) Trying escaping any unruly characters with a ``\" Thanks, Nathan. I had tried 1 and 4 but they didn't work (at least the way I did them). I don't have a shell that expands file names, but I'll try 2 if it happens again. (I've zapped it all by starting at the parent directory.) There's probably someone who can explain why non- printable characters are useful in file names, but I'd really rather disallow them altogether - if there's a build option or control flag to set. Anyone? Walter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message