Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 19:23:42 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> Cc: Ryan Younce <ryan@manunkind.org>, Joe Oliveiro <joe@advancewebhosting.com>, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Larry Rosenman <ler@lerctr.org>, Daniel.Bye@uk.uu.net, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Pesky file Message-ID: <14888.20254.298529.549656@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <00120201170201.04232@buffy> References: <14888.4617.148599.530943@guru.mired.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012011703120.17623-100000@joe.pythonvideo.com> <20001201190335.A35590@cheshire.manunkind.org> <00120201170201.04232@buffy>
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Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> types:
> Mmm..
> It's nearly Christmas so a small prize may be awarded
> if you can get rid of a file whose name is
> -<bs>*<bs>
>
> Where <bs> is the backspace character.
So you want to remove a file that looks like this:
guru$ ls -b -- -*
-\b*\b
How you quote the <bs> character to get it past the input routines
will depend on your tty settings (specifically, lnext). Letting <bs>
stand for the appropriate sequence of keystrokes to get the <bs> fed
to rm, it can be done by one of: "rm -- '-<bs>*<bs>'", "rm ./-<bs>\*<bs>",
or similar things.
You can use printf to eliminate the lnext dependency, but if your
erase character isn't C-h, you'll need to use something other than \b
for the escape sequence.
rm `printf "./\b*\b"`
However, you may trip over some shells having printf as a builtin, so
you can use a suitable scripting language (with the same caveat about
\b):
python -c "import os; os.unlink('-\b*\b')"
And of course, to be *really* ham-handed about it, you can always use
clri followed by an fsck.
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information.
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