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mgjk
Asked: 2011-04-14 05:55:59 +0800 CST

Difficult to Delete Files in Linux

  • 772

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

bash find rm

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

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

    find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm {} \;
    • 8

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

    find ./ -inum 167794 -delete
    • 6

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

    find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm '{}' ';'
    • 0