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Problems removing files with semicolons in the filename

 
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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Problems removing files with semicolons in the filename
# 1  
Old 09-03-2013
Problems removing files with semicolons in the filename
There are some 40 files created by accident with filenames with semicolons, as well as other non-printable characters. I can not find a correct way to delete them. This is what I tried:

Code:
bash-2.03# ls bad|head -1
000025;001;1377795616;
bash-2.03# rm "bad/000025;001;1377795616;???"
rm: bad/000025;001;1377795616;??? non-existent
bash-2.03# 
bash-2.03# rm 'bad/000025;001;1377795616;???' 
rm: bad/000025;001;1377795616;??? non-existent
bash-2.03# rm 'bad/000025;001;1377795616;*'  
rm: bad/000025;001;1377795616;* non-existent
bash-2.03# rm 'bad/000025\;001\;1377795616\;*'
rm: bad/000025\;001\;1377795616\;* non-existent
bash-2.03# rm "bad/000025\;001\;1377795616\;*" 
rm: bad/000025\;001\;1377795616\;* non-existent

I can not remove the whole directory as well

Code:
bash-2.03# rm -r bad
rm: 000025;001;1377795616; non-existent
rm: 000025;003;1377809391; non-existent
rm: 000025;012;1377803446;' non-existent
rm: 000025;014;1377789967; non-existent
...
... etc... same kind of non-existent msg per each file
...
rm: unable to remove directory bad: File exists (error 17)
bash-2.03#

What can I do?
# 2  
Old 09-03-2013
Remove files with a semicolon in the filename
Code:
rm *\;*

But
Code:
rm -r bad

should work!
It looks like the file system is corrupted.
# 3  
Old 09-04-2013
You can also list the inode of the file along with long listing using
Code:
ls -il

and then remove files using inode number

Code:
find . -inum xxxx -exec rm {} \;

Replace xxxx with the inode number found using previous ls command
# 4  
Old 09-04-2013
I tried both proposed solutions, but it did not work:
Code:
# rm *\;*
rm: 000025;001;1377795616; non-existent
rm: 000025;003;1377809391; non-existent
... etc ...

and
Code:
# ls -il
ls: ./000025;001;1377795616; not found: No such file or directory (error 2)
ls: ./000025;003;1377809391; not found: No such file or directory (error 2)
 
... etc ...

# 5  
Old 09-04-2013
If even ls can't list them all by itself with no filenames given, that means the raw names being given by readdir are wrong... This does suggest disk corruption unfortunately.
# 6  
Old 09-04-2013
I have actually created these file by extracting some uniq ids from some http logs forgetting to replace ';' with some other delimiter. I don't think the disk has any issue.

Actually we did have this box restarted for another reason and fsck -o was run without any issues.

Just to get the inodes I cooked up this code:

Code:
 
  struct dirent *di = {NULL};
  DIR           *cd = {NULL};
  struct stat   stinfo = {NULL};
        if((cd = opendir(path)) == NULL)
                return(-1);
        while((di = readdir(cd)) != NULL)
        {
                if(di->d_name[0] == '.')
                {
                        if(di->d_name[1] == '.' || di->d_name[1] == 0)
                                continue;
                }
                printf("%li\t%s\n", di->d_ino, di->d_name);
        }
        closedir(cd);
        return(0);

and I got those inodes:
Code:
129935  000025;001;1377795616;
129936  000025;003;1377809391;
... etc ...

I hoped I could use find with -inod, but it did not work:
Code:
$ find . -inum 129935 -exec rm {} \;
find: cannot access ./000025;001;1377795616;: No such file or directory (error 2)
find: cannot access ./000025;003;1377809391;: No such file or directory (error 2)
... etc ...

Somehow find listed out all files, not the one pointed by the inode.

The file system is HTFS under OSR 5.8
Any ideas, please?

---------- Post updated at 11:43 AM ---------- Previous update was at 11:32 AM ----------

some more info, I debugged my code and printed dirent :


Code:
(dbxtra) p *di
(d_ino = 129935, d_off = 56, d_reclen = 32, d_name = "0")
(dbxtra) p &di->d_name
0x4016b6
(dbxtra) 0x4016b6 / 32 c
0x004016b6:  '0' '0' '0' '0' '2' '5' ';' '0' '0' '1' ';' '1' '3' '7' '7' '7'
0x004016c6:  '9' '5' '6' '1' '6' ';' '\220' '\373' '^A' '\0' 'X' '\0' '\0' '\0'
' ' '\0'

So, I see that name contains several \0 zeroes. Is there any way to remove thises files?
# 7  
Old 09-04-2013
Strings in C stop at the very first \0, everything after it you can ignore. Your debugger prints the whole array regardless, ignorant of what its contents represent. Filenames cannot contain \0 unless you've got an egregious filesystem bug, anyway.

I wonder if the filename is somehow being mangled when being passed between program to program. I wonder if the name were fed direct from di->d_name to unlink(), whether it would take.

If you try this, try it with extreme caution! I suggest as a start, this to avoid non-semicolon filenames:

Code:
#include <string.h>
...

if(strchr(de->d_name, ';') == NULL) continue;

Last edited by Corona688; 09-04-2013 at 03:59 PM..
 
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