Solved how to delete garbage file

[ipfreak]

Hi all:

When I play around tar/untar/gzip/gunzip, accidentally somehow it created a garbage file with file name:

----------  1 dave  staff  1111863812 Feb 23 18:51 ??v??Y?? ?????B*"?.??<???cog?*??z?Ee?O??d???@B?A2??v??m_??F???q?^H?{????;35???????B gj~?c?j?}!?{??@?

I tried to delete by command rm -f '.....' but it won't work. Any way I can clean it out?

 

[asteriskRoss]

The problem is that the filename does not contain question marks but unprintable characters that are being represented as question marks. There is the lengthy Thread cant-delete-file-with-strange-name.14612 that discusses the same issue and indicates that the shell commands one might expect to work, such as rm -i *, don't.

The most sensible suggestion I saw from that thread was to use a file manager program to delete the file. If you're not running a graphical environment, Midnight Commander, available from ports as misc/mc would be worth a go. If you are running X, you have a wider choice and something like x11-fm/rox-filer might do the job.

Otherwise, you could write a short program yourself that retrieves the filename and delete the file. Passing the filename directly should avoid any character translation issues that I suspect might be stopping the shell commands working properly. If writing it in C, useful functions from the Standard C Library would be readdir() (see the DIRECTORY(3) man page) and unlink(2).

 

[tetragir]

Hello,

Which shell are you using? Generally if you write in the first character, and press "tab", it will automatically fill the rest of the file name (If you use shells/zsh, if you don't write the first character, press tab a few times, eventually the file with the weird name will come up).
Other solution is if it is a temporary folder, you can move any other file to another folder, delete the folder, recreate again, and move back the files. It is generally a good idea, that you create temporary folder for playing around.

 

[ipfreak]

Hello,

Which shell are you using? Generally if you write in the first character, and press "tab", it will automatically fill the rest of the file name (If you use shells/zsh, if you don't write the first character, press tab a few times, eventually the file with the weird name will come up).
Other solution is if it is a temporary folder, you can move any other file to another folder, delete the folder, recreate again, and move back the files. It is generally a good idea, that you create temporary folder for playing around.

tThanks. tThat was what iI did to have it deleted. bBut it is such "ugly" way to delete a file.

 

[ipfreak]

The problem is that the filename does not contain question marks but unprintable characters that are being represented as question marks. There is the lengthy Thread cant-delete-file-with-strange-name.14612 that discusses the same issue and indicates that the shell commands one might expect to work, such as rm -i *, don't.

The most sensible suggestion I saw from that thread was to use a file manager program to delete the file. If you're not running a graphical environment, Midnight Commander, available from ports as misc/mc would be worth a go. If you are running X, you have a wider choice and something like x11-fm/rox-filer might do the job.

Otherwise, you could write a short program yourself that retrieves the filename and delete the file. Passing the filename directly should avoid any character translation issues that I suspect might be stopping the shell commands working properly. If writing it in C, useful functions from the Standard C Library would be readdir() (see the DIRECTORY(3) man page) and unlink(2).

Really appreciate the advice, especially that discussion.