Cannot delete/rename/move a file from Windows with a special character

i would try to list to see what is going one:

# display hidden characters as numbers

ls -lb

# if you have lots of files in the directory

ls -lb | more

ls -lB

I have assumed you pulled out the flash drive.

you can usually type a few characters then press tap to get the rest of the characters printed.

Hello

You may try deleting the file by inode number. To do that, first get the inode number of the file by ls(1):

#!/bin/bash cd ~/Desktop ls -il

And then delete the file by inode number using find(1):

#!/bin/bash # e.g., delete file of inode number = 5873013 in ~/Desktop cd ~/Desktop find . -depth 1 -type f -inum 5873013 -delete

Good luck,

H

use disk utility to verify the disk. Would be interesting to see if there is directory corruption.

if so to fix, do a safe boot.

Try a safe boot.

Shutdown your machine. Hold down the shift key. Poweron. Wait awhile; wait awhile while you harddrive

is being checked.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455

Please make a backup before trying this.

Open Terminal and cd to the Desktop directory

issue

vi ./

move with the arrow keys on the line with the file name you can't delete. Press shift+D and confirm deletion pressing y then return. Quit vi typing

:q!

Hello

This seems to be tough one...

By the way, the NULL character shown in the name "Xiumi's Backup␀ alias" is ␀ U+2400 GRAPHIC FOR NULL, which is a sort of replacement character. I thought it is just for display purpose and actual character in HFS Plus name is U+0000 but possibly actual character in HFS Plus name could be U+2400 for some reason, in which case you might try the following command.

#!/bin/bash rm ~/Desktop/"Xiumi's Backup"$'\342\220\200'" alias"

Good luck,

H

Hello

As far as I can tell, I can delete file with null chararcter in name under OS X 10.6.8.

To test it, I created file name with null chararcter in it, e.g., "abc\0xyz.txt", under (Classic) OS 9, put it in a HFS Plus disk image and mount it under OS X 10.6.8. Under 10.6.8, the file name is displayed as "abc␀xyz.txt" where null character is replaced with ␀ U+2400 GRAPHIC FOR NULL in both Finder and Terminal. I can delete the file via Finder by normal delete operation and via Terminal using name "abc␀xyz.txt" or $'abc\342\220\200xyz.txt' in bash. I even created alias file of this file and confirmed I can delete it as well.

So it might be new problem of later OSes or unidentified problem specific to your disk volume.

If you have OS X 10.6.8 machine, you might connect your MBP in Target Disk Mode to that machine and manipulate the file from OS X 10.6.8.

Ultimately you may initialise the volume to clear the problematic file.

Good luck,

H

Desktop has Read Only permission?

issue the following command in Terminal

ls -lade ~/Desktop

permissions should be

drwx------+ 11 sunhe staff 374 10 Gen 14:03 /Users/sunhe/Desktop

0: group:everyone deny delete

don't mind date and numbers

Hello

Here's an AppleScript script you might try, which is a mere wrapper of pyobjc script using NSFileManager's method. To use it, copy the code into new window of Script Editor.app, run the script and it will ask you to choose the file in question and then try to remove it.

set f to (choose file)'s POSIX path do shell script "/usr/bin/python <<'EOF' - " & f's quoted form & " # coding: utf-8 import sys from Foundation import * for f in [ a.decode('utf-8') for a in sys.argv[1:] ]: b, err = NSFileManager.defaultManager().removeItemAtPath_error_(f, None) if not b: print(err.description().encode('utf-8')) EOF"

Briefly tested with pyobjc 2.2b3 and python 2.6.1 under OS X 10.6.8.

Regards,

H