kathi@capone.UUCP (Kathi Loughlin) (05/20/89)
all this about . and .. and the bizarre characters that can come ahead triggers a problem I failed to solve today. I had some EXTREMELY INTERESTING file names created by a cpio -icCB that went "out of phase". (i problably know the cause of that!). These were SO BAD though.. that my usual cheap tricks to find files with bizarre characters in the name didnt work... I tried ls'ing into a file and editing it to make a rm script... but it (ls) couldn't even process it, got alot of graphic trash and "not found" messages. A "file" of my tmpfile identified it as "executable".... which was no big surprise. I was thinking of using rm -i [~a-z]*, but I knew it would just put my terminal into graphics again IF rm could handle processing the data. I guess it expects names inside the ascii range or some silly limitation like that.. expecitng them to be created from the keyboard.. how unimaginative. Finally I did the cheap cowardly thing.... moved the entire directory elsewhere and blew the monster into the void with rm -rf. Hey, it was easier to reinstall at that point... and I wanted to get even! I had put my terminal in unrecoverable graphics mode 3 times and was tired of it. Yes, it felt great, and I even snickered a little as I did it. Possibly this was the only real option at this point. However, next time it might be my c homework after 5 hours of intense work and murphy's law states that if this happens, it will happen at 2 am, just before the last deadline of the program... and i will finally have gotten it working... What else might work? -- "If once to the dark side | Kathi Loughlin @ uunet!ccicpg!capone!kathi you turn, forever will it | CCI Computers (714) 458-7282 dominate your destiny" | 9801 Muirlands Blvd. Irvine, Ca. 92718
lupton@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Robert Lupton) (05/22/89)
If you _really_ want to enjoy watching a directory die, you should use yes | rm -ri dir Robert