control character file names

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2008, Noah wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> there is a blank directory that I cant seem to view.  I believe the  
> directory is a '^M'.  can somebody please explain how I can see  
> filenames and directories containing control characters.  Also how do I  
> rename the directory with 'mv'?

There are various ways to handle this.

# this will show the file with special characters escaped
ls | cat -v 

# this will put the output of ls into a file that can then be
# edited with vim so one could insert ``mv '' before the funny
# file name, and `` newname'' after it.
ls > tmpfile

As others have mentioned, using a graphical file manager can make
it easy as well.

Bill
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