deleting directories with ??? in name

[Parv]

in message <40564606.3020504 at earthlink.net>,
wrote Walter thusly...
>
> Erik Trulsson wrote:
>
> > ls(1) by default displays all unprintable characters as question
> > marks.  To see what the filenames actually are use 'ls -aB'.
> >
> > To delete files with strange names you can always do a 'rm -i *'
> > and answer 'y' only for the weird files.
>
> 'rm -i *' returns "no match"
> 'ls -aB' shows me the file names, but even after carefully typing
> in what it shows me in an 'rm' command (name in quotes) says not
> found.  There are \216, \235, \237, and \377 characters in the
> names


Use the inodes, find(1) & xargs(1) instead to remove the files...

  - Use '-i' option of ls(1) to list the inodes of the offending
    files; note them.  These are listed in the most left hand
    column.

    #  ls -iaB1


  - Find(1) the files matching above inodes (assuming evil files are
    in current directory & inode-1 & inode-2 are the inodes of two
    nasty files) ...

    # find . \( -inum <inode-1> -o -inum <inode-2> \) -print0


  - Pass the find(1) output to rm(1) ...

    # find . \( -inum <inode-1> -o -inum <inode-2> \) -print0 \
    # | xargs -0 rm -fv


  - Done


...Read up on ls(1), find(1) & xargs(1).


  - Parv

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