Backslashes in Filenames

shepherdsflock · #1 (**permalink**) 10-28-2008

Using a small script, I automatically generated some text logs. The files ended being undownloadable, unopenable and undeletable. Upon further investigation, the files ended up looking like this:

log\r
log2\r
log3\r

I've tried a few different things, including double slashing before the r in order to try and get these files to be usable. I've adjusted the script so it no longer does this, but I'd like to be able to access these other logs.

Any ideas?

dan-e · #2 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Are the files isolated in a directory?

If so, you could try:

Code:

cat log*

... or something similar. The best way around this problem is probably to use a wildcard match rather than include the \ literal.

shepherdsflock · #3 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

No. They're not. Let me try that though and see if it does any good.

zaxxon · #4 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

If it doesn't help, you can try to connect via ftp and delete them from there. Sometimes it allows to use names, which on a shell may not be used or can't be correctly found.

shepherdsflock · #5 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Yeah.. I tried that. I get critical error. The filenames don't show with the \r so I am certain that is causing some sort of conflict with the filename. I've tried renaming with wildcards. Frustrated.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I do appreciate it.

methyl · #6 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Try ls -lab to find out exactly what characters are in the filenames and (more importantly) how many characters are there.
Then "ls" each file with question marks for the doubtful characters to make sure you can refer to the file uniquely.
Then rename (mv) each file - again using question marks for the doubtful characters.
Finally delete the renamed file.

bakunin · #7 (**permalink**) 10-29-2008

Here is a dead-sure way of erasing even the most nastily named file:

get the inode number by using "ls -lai":

Code:

bakunin@machine # ls -lai
246400 drwxr-x---   5 user     staff           256 Oct 21 15:08 .
246236 drwxr-x---   4 user     staff           256 Oct 17 14:26 ..
246237 drwxr-x---   2 user     staff           256 Oct 14 15:50 SPECS
249856 drwxr-x---   2 root     admin           256 Oct 21 15:08 aix
246613 -rw-r-----   1 user     staff          6499 Oct 20 12:45 some_file_with_a_funny_name

Now use the inode for a "find"-command:

Code:

bakunin@machine # find . -inode 246613 -exec rm -f {} \;

Instead of "rm" use whatever command you want to apply to the file. This will even work on files named "..." (yes, this is legal - if you want to torture your sysadmin) or something like that.

But in your case it might be even simpler than that: if the "\r" in the filenames are real character and not the visualization of some nasty control chars (find out by piping "ls -la" to a file and use "set list" in vi to display control codes) then simply escaping the backslash should suffice: "filename\\r" for what is displayed as "filename\r", etc.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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