filename hoopla

[phil.rice%rand-relay at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:  Bill.LeFebvre <phil.rice at rand-relay>

I know I said I didn't want to see more messages about filename
characters, but ...

     You can always get rid of a filename  with junk in it by doing "rm -i *"
     and answering 'y' at the right moment....

Unfortunately, this is not completely true.  With the c-shell and the
Bourne shell, the eighth bit of an argument always gets masked out
(unless there is some bizarre syntax that I am unaware of) so that the
command "rm -i *" will not work with files that have eight bit
characters.  When `rm' gets the argument, the eighth bit will be 0 and
it won't find the file.  But this trick will work for a file that has
control characters in the name (in fact, I have used it upon occasion).

                                William LeFebvre
                                ARPANet: phil.rice at Rand-Relay
                                CSNet:   phil at rice
                                USENet:  ...!lbl-csam!rice!phil