[SOLVED] cannot remove file "??"

vincix · 01-05-2017, 02:53 AM

I have this weird file which ls interprets as "??"
ll
total 332
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 153536 Dec 18 12:40 ??
-rw-------. 1 root root 954 Dec 16 12:13 anaconda-ks.cfg

I can't seem to get rid of it.
I tried rm -rf \?\? which obviously didn't work.

Any ideas what's going on and how it might have occurred?

Thanks

vincix · 01-05-2017, 02:59 AM

I deleted it running:

Quote:

rm -rf ??

Turbocapitalist · 01-05-2017, 04:38 AM

That will quietly zap any and all two-letter files you have in the current directory and any directories underneath the current directory. You might just try rm -i ?? which will not only limit the damage to the current directory but also ask before deleting anything.

You can also wrap the name in single or double quotes rm -i "??" to focus on just that one file name and leave the other two-letter files alone.

See man 7 glob for what the ? does when unquoted in the shell.

vincix · 01-05-2017, 05:47 AM

Right, indeed. Thanks. I'm thinking that the file wasn't actually named "??" and that's why it was hard to delete it. Escaping the characters should have worked and the fact that it didn't tells me that "??" wasn't the actual name of the file