From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 28 18:55:04 2004 Return-Path: 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 9405E16A4CE for ; Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:55:04 +0000 (GMT) Received: from makeworld.com (makeworld.com [198.92.228.38]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2237C43D48 for ; Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:55:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from racerx@makeworld.com) Received: from localhost (localhost.com [127.0.0.1]) by makeworld.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FA2F60E2; Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:55:03 -0600 (CST) Received: from makeworld.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (makeworld.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 87166-01; Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:54:51 -0600 (CST) Received: from [198.92.228.34] (racerx.makeworld.com [198.92.228.34]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by makeworld.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 037C860CD; Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:54:50 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <41AA1F01.7080404@makeworld.com> Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:54:57 -0600 From: Chris User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (X11/20041127) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Oliver Fuchs References: <20041128112146.GA1696@oliverfuchs.onlinehome.de> In-Reply-To: <20041128112146.GA1696@oliverfuchs.onlinehome.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by ClamAV 0.75.1/amavisd-new-2.2.0 (20041102) at makeworld.com - Isn't it ironic cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: what does "rm //" delete? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:55:04 -0000 Oliver Fuchs wrote: > Hi, > > I had a directory which contained the following: > > ls showed me simple this: "?" with 0 bytes > ls -axl showed me nothing > > So I tried to delete the directory but could not succeed with "rm -R" > because the "directory is not empty". I changed to the directory and tried > to delete everything inside with "rm *" but also did not succeed. It seemed > that the file had no name. So than I did a mistake and wanted to delete the > file with no name with the operation: > > rm -R // > > This was a big mistake which I noticed soon enough (some files in /bin were > deleted). I could repair the damage but what I want to know is what exactly > is > > rm -R // > > deleting. It seems that it is deleting everything? > > Thanx in advance > > Oliver > When you have a filename that is odd, I use the syntax: rm "whatever the file name is" Enclosing it in "" works well for me. -- Best regards, Chris Forgive and remember.