[SOLVED] Can't rm -rf a file because mageia thinks its a dir

[joeyc]

On Mageia 2, KDE

I tried to delete a whole bunch of folders using rm -rf <parent_dir> and they didn't delete completely.

So I went in and tried to delete it manually with rm -f <specific_file>

And it said "<specific_file> is a directory"

Where do I go from here?

[tom_]

IIRC KDE has some problem deleting files and directories with special characters (non ASCII) in the name,
usually mc (midnight commander) can solve this kind of trouble

[doktor5000]

IIRC KDE has some problem deleting files and directories with special characters (non ASCII) in the name,
usually mc (midnight commander) can solve this kind of trouble

Well, what does have KDE to do with deleting files via rm?

@joeyc: Please show the output of

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ls -lai <specific_file_you_could_not_delete>

[joeyc]

This is what I got

[root@localhost Decapitated]# ls -lai The\ Negation/
total 4
15962 drwx------ 1 joey joey 4096 Dec 30 21:01 ./
15603 drwx------ 1 joey joey 0 Dec 13 23:33 ../

[Mayavimmer]

Do you get any error messages when you try to remove the dir? If not, type the following to get the diagnostic return code:

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rmdir The\ Negation/ ; echo $?

Copypaste the output.

[Ken-Bergen]

This is what I got

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[root@localhost Decapitated]# ls -lai The\ Negation/
total 4
15962 drwx------ 1 joey joey 4096 Dec 30 21:01 ./
15603 drwx------ 1 joey joey    0 Dec 13 23:33 ../

In Linux just as in Windows when working from the command line directory's and files with spaces in the name must be enclosed in quotes.
In your example the command is looking for the directory The\ which doesn't exist however "The\ Negation" will be found.

[Mayavimmer]

This is what I got

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[root@localhost Decapitated]# ls -lai The\ Negation/
total 4
15962 drwx------ 1 joey joey 4096 Dec 30 21:01 ./
15603 drwx------ 1 joey joey    0 Dec 13 23:33 ../

In Linux just as in Windows when working from the command line directory's and files with spaces in the name must be enclosed in quotes.
In your example the command is looking for the directory The\ which doesn't exist however "The\ Negation" will be found.

Ken-Bergen, there's no fault here, I believe. joeyc may correctly specify The\ Negation, escaping the space with a backslash, or "The Negation", escaping the space and the rest of the characters (which do not need escaping here) with doublequotes. I think you misunderstood something.

[Ken-Bergen]

Ken-Bergen, there's no fault here, I believe. joeyc may correctly specify The\ Negation, escaping the space with a backslash, or "The Negation", escaping the space and the rest of the characters (which do not need escaping here) with doublequotes. I think you misunderstood something.

Yes I missed the fact that \ is an escape character not part of the file/directory name.

[joeyc]

Mayavimmer - you genius! That worked! By the way the output was "0"

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rmdir The\ Negation/ ; echo $?

[Mayavimmer]

That worked! By the way the output was "0"

Yes, the output was produced by the echo command and it says that the preceding rmdir command completed successfully. Any nonzero output would signal failure instead.