On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 22:06 -0500, Richard Shaw wrote: > On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Richard Shaw wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 2:20 AM, John Summerfield > > > <debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > > > > > On Mon, 2008-03-24 at 16:29 -0500, Richard Shaw wrote: > > > > >> Anyone know what this is? I couldn't find any relevant pages in Google. > > > > >> > > > > >> I have a file called "??" (no quotes) in the home directory of my > > > > >> mythtv user. When I try to do anything to the file it acts like it's > > > > >> not there. Is this something that fsck would fix? I don't know if it's > > > > >> related but I noticed it after using "switchdesk" a few times to try > > > > >> different desktop managers. > > > > > > > > > > Probably came from a a malformed Shell redirect or whatever. Anyway, > > > > > given that the Shell will interpret ?? to mean "any file with a > > > > > two-letter name", need to escape the ? characters in order to pass the > > > > > filename to the Shell, e.g.: rm \?\? > > > > > > > > > > > > > Id' say it's a dodgy name, might not br ?? at all. > > > > > > > > Try > > > > echo ?? | xxd > > > > > > > > eg > > > > 16:20 [summer@numbat ~]$ echo ?? | xxd > > > > 0000000: 3277 2061 7520 6b73 2073 7720 7433 2074 2w au ks sw t3 t > > > > 0000010: 6d20 7474 2076 6d0a m tt vm. > > > > 16:20 [summer@numbat ~]$ echo ?? > > > > 2w au ks sw t3 tm tt vm > > > > 16:20 [summer@numbat ~]$ > > > > > > > > Tried everything everyone suggested, no matter what I do it gives me > > > the standard "No file or directory" blah blah blah... Maybe I should > > > just fsck it and see if it goes away... > > > > try > > > > $ ls -l | cat -etv > > > > that might show you if there are special characters (like tabs) > > embedded in the filename. > > > > rday > > That got me a little closer to an answer but I'm not sure how to > interpret the results. > ls -l gives me: > -rw-rw-r-- 1 mythuser root 44 2008-03-17 22:10 ?? > ls -l | cat -etv gives me: > -rw-rw-r-- 1 mythuser root 44 2008-03-17 22:10 M-`M-sM-,$ > > But how do I interpret the non-printable characters in order to remove the file? As I said in my original reply several days ago, you can use "rm -i" (specifically "rm -i *"). The -i means "interactive". It walks you through every file in the directory asking if you want to remove it. To be used with great care of course ... I'm amazed no-one else brought this up. The -i option to rm has been around for at least 20 years. Maybe only us oldies remember it (using Unix since 1974 :-) poc
