From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Tue Mar 16 07:18:49 2004
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
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 5ED6216A4CE
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Tue, 16 Mar 2004 07:18:49 -0800 (PST)
Received: from gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net (gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net
	[207.217.120.84])
	by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A82043D2F
	for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>;
	Tue, 16 Mar 2004 07:18:49 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from walterk1@earthlink.net)
Received: from user-12hcobn.cable.mindspring.com ([69.22.97.119]
	helo=earthlink.net)
	by gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1)
	id 1B3GKy-0000TW-00; Tue, 16 Mar 2004 07:18:37 -0800
Message-ID: <40571ACA.3060302@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:18:34 -0500
From: Walter <walterk1@earthlink.net>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US;
	rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>
References: <40564E2C.7060706@earthlink.net> <44smg9oa4r.fsf@be-well.ilk.org>
	<20040315190746.799e4b0d.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu>
	<20040316122231.GA55349@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20040316122231.GA55349@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
cc: Chris Pressey <cpressey@catseye.mine.nu>
cc: Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: deleting directories with ??? in name]
X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1
Precedence: list
List-Id: User questions <freebsd-questions.freebsd.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>,
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions>
List-Post: <mailto:freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
List-Help: <mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions>,
	<mailto:freebsd-questions-request@freebsd.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:18:49 -0000


Matthew Seaman wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 07:07:46PM -0800, Chris Pressey wrote:
> 
> 
>>That wouldn't explain why 'rm -i *' returned 'no match', though.
> 
> 
> Just to eliminate the obvious: did these weird filenames begin with a
> '.'?  Shell globbing treats file names with a leading period
> specially. You'ld have to do:
> 
>     % ls -d .*
> 
> to get a listing of those files, and:
> 
>     % rm -ri .[^.]* 
> 
> to delete them.  Note the extra effort taken to avoid matching the
> special names '.' and '..' -- doing a recursive delete of '..' is a
> real foot-shooting exercise.
> 
> 	Cheers,
> 
> 	Matthew
> 

I don't remember whether the files had leading dots or not.  Sorry.
But I'll keep this method in mind if it happens again.  Thanks.