ghost file

[David R. Linn]

Sorry to drag out this topic but this bounced and makes
what I consider a good point.

----- Begin Included Message -----

In UNIX-WIZARDS Digest  V6#021, Jean-Pierre Radley <jpr at dasys1.uucp>
writes:
>It may be so screwed up that the "*" metacharacter won't expand into such
>a bad name (and if the name starts with ".", then the "*" also won't
>help).

In fact, I encountered just such a situation recently, where a program
mistakenly created files with a "\213\316#\317" (C-escapes apply) prefix.
In this case, "rm -i *" will *NOT* work.

The Bourne shell uses the 8th bit of characters for special purposes
and so botches the expansion of wildcards that produce filenames that
already have the 8th bit set.  For this reason, you want to avoid
wildcards.  In my case, I was able to go to the affected directory
and type:

$ rm -ri .

since rm knows how to read directories without any assistance from
a shell.  This wildcard problem should be fixed with the "internationalized"
shells such as ksh-i.

	 David

David Linn, System Manager/Postmaster      |INET:
Vanderbilt University School of Engineering| drl at vuse.vanderbilt.edu
Post Office Box 1824, Station B            |Phone:
Nashville, TN, USA  37235                  | [+1] 615-343-6164


----- End Included Message -----