Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Accessing files by inode #s
Message-ID: <7182@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 25 Jan 88 22:43:09 GMT
References: <11470@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <11470@brl-adm.ARPA> iunix1@almsa-1.arpa (Will Martin) writes:
>Since "ls" has a "-i" option that will show you the inode # of the file,
>I have always wondered why that other commands such as "rm" do not also
>have such an option, so that you could refer to a file by its inode
>number instead of by its name.

You'll probably be embarrassed by the answer:  "rm" removes a link,
not an inode.

By the way, you can use
	rm pattern
where "pattern" is some shell R.E. that matches just the link name
you're after.  Another, more usual approach is
	rm -ri .