filename containing a question mark

tikit · 06-25-2009, 01:24 PM

Hi,

I have a file named 'Movie ?04.cd1.avi'. I can neither open the file nor rename it. I always get "No such file or directory". I think the problem is the question mark it contains. Is there a way how to open or rename the file?

Thanks.

jonaskellens · 06-25-2009, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tikit

Hi,

I have a file named 'Movie ?04.cd1.avi'. I can neither open the file nor rename it. I always get "No such file or directory". I think the problem is the question mark it contains. Is there a way how to open or rename the file?

Thanks.

I think like you can escape a " " (space) with "\ ", you can also escape this question mark.

Code:

mv Movie\ \?04.cd1.avi Movie\ 04.cd1.avi

tikit · 06-25-2009, 01:49 PM

I tried this but it does not work. When I type Movie and press TAB, the rest of the filename is completed with the escaped characters, but I always get "No such file or directory"

Uncle_Theodore · 06-25-2009, 01:58 PM

What shell do you use?
I don't think the problem is with the question mark, here it works nicely:

teddy@freakinwork ~$ touch "Movie ?04.cd1.avi"
teddy@freakinwork ~$ ls M*
Movie ?04.cd1.avi
teddy@freakinwork ~$ mv Movie\ \?04.cd1.avi Movie04.cd1.avi
teddy@freakinwork ~$ ls M*
Movie04.cd1.avi

You might have a problem with you filesystem. I would try checing it for consistency.

nuwen52 · 06-25-2009, 02:01 PM

I was able to enclose the filename in "" (no backslash escapes) and that worked in a test.

mv "Movie ?04.cd1.avi" test.avi

GrapefruiTgirl · 06-25-2009, 02:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tikit

I tried this but it does not work. When I type Movie and press TAB, the rest of the filename is completed with the escaped characters, but I always get "No such file or directory"

Don't pressing TAB, you don't need to.

Why would you use TAB, when you just need a few characters, a new filename, and a RETURN/ENTER. TAB completion is not really what you want, as of course, it keeps returning the last commands you gave it back to you.

Also, have you got the needed permissions to move/rename the file?

try: cp -ufv ./Mo* ./NewName

Hope I am understanding this issue correctly,
Uncle Theodore may be onto something, but his examples should work.

What type filesystem is the problem occurring on?

Sasha

tikit · 06-25-2009, 03:34 PM

Thanks for replies. It still does not work. I think it is a filesystem problem. This file is on Windows FAT mounted via CIFS. If I use

Code:

touch "Movie ?04.cd1.avi"

on an ext3 partition there is no problem.

GrapefruiTgirl · 06-25-2009, 05:50 PM

Quote:

check=value
Three different levels of pickyness can be chosen:

r[elaxed]
Upper and lower case are accepted and equivalent, long name
parts are truncated (e.g. verylongname.foobar becomes very-
long.foo), leading and embedded spaces are accepted in each
name part (name and extension).

n[ormal]
Like "relaxed", but many special characters (*, ?, <, spaces,
etc.) are rejected. This is the default.

s[trict]
Like "normal", but names may not contain long parts and special
characters that are sometimes used on Linux, but are not
accepted by MS-DOS are rejected. (+, =, spaces, etc.)

The above is a quote out of the `mount` man page; I'm not familiar with CIFS but is it possible the default option setting for this mount option is causing the problem? Maybe mounting with check=relaxed option would get around it.

Sasha

EDIT - PS, this option is for FAT, by the way; I forgot to mention

tikit · 06-26-2009, 11:38 AM

Many thanks. mount -o check=r did the trick.