Difficult to Delete Files in Linux

Question

There's a lot of stuff about this on the Internet, but most of the examples there are contrived. How does one delete files that are really stubborn? e.g.,

$ find ./ -inum 167794
./àKÈÿÿÿÿ@
$ find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm \"{}\" \;
rm: cannot lstat `"./\037\340\025K\021\004\310\377\377\377\377@\020\002"': Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 13 '11 at 14:16

8

Try removing the escaped double quotes. I believe rm thinks those are part of the filename.

find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm {} \;

answered Apr 13 '11 at 14:16

glenn jackman

4,880

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 17 '15 at 04:30

6

Better way with modern find (version 4.2.3 or later):

find ./ -inum 167794 -delete

edited Aug 17 '15 at 04:30

womble

98,245

answered Aug 17 '15 at 04:26

METAJIJI

161
1
3

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 13 '11 at 15:30

0

If you want safe quoting for every shell I know, use this:

find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm '{}' ';'

answered Apr 13 '11 at 15:30

sam hocevar

103

Difficult to Delete Files in Linux

3 Answers3