Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!isg100!jack!nusdhub!rwhite
From: rwhite@nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ghost file
Message-ID: <1254@nusdhub.UUCP>
Date: 17 Nov 88 00:52:53 GMT
References: <8430@alice.UUCP>
Organization: National University, San Diego
Lines: 29

in article <8430@alice.UUCP>, debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra) says:
<> 
<> In article <17529@adm.BRL.MIL> ZAT011%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Thomas Heil) writes:
<>>I got a little problem with  a "ghost file". It appears when I  list the
<>>contents of  a directory, but  it can't be accessed  in any way  - every
<>>program tells  me it doesn't  exist. It can't  even be removed.  But the
<>>directory (only containing that file) cannot be removed because it's not
<>>empty. And I can even create another  file with the same name which then
<>>appears  twice...
<> I would suspect that the name of the ghost file contains a non-printable
<> character, which doesn't show up when you try ls. A way to find out is
<> to make an octal dump of the directory.
<> Another way of trying to delete the file is to try to generate the name:
<> if it appears as "ghost" in the directory you could try
<> rm *g*h*o*s*t*

There is no deed to get baroque over these files.  use the
"-b" option to ls so that it will display non-printing characters
as octal strings.

If nothing will locate tthe file, move everything out of the directory
that you want to keep, and then "rm -rf directory" instead of rmdir.

This is not so bad as you might think.  I have users adding files that
contain arrow key codes, and line hits all the time.

gopher baroque!

Rob.