Unix newbie question

[realisticphish]

i'm using OSX, and have started learning unix via terminal. I have discovered some hidden files that apparently got downloaded inadvertantly through a p2p. they are just images, but i want to delete them. the problem is, they have multi-word names, with spaces, and have parentheses. How do I delete these?

i know, stupid stuff, but i'm teaching myself, and the book i'm using doesnt help in this respect

Thanks!

[FormerDittoHead]

1. escape!

the "\" is an escape character indicating what follows is a special character

"\ " = space.

the name of the file has spaces.jpg
=
the\ name\ of\ the\ file\ has\ spaces.jpg

doesn't OSX support filename "tab completion"?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. Other way: double quotes

rm "the name of the file has spaces.jpg"

[realisticphish]

6. i tried that

(that's what the book said), but it didn't work. I don't know if it was because it was a hidden file or what

[realisticphish]

5. it does

i just figured out why it didn't work...i wasnt capitalizing the first letter :dunce:

i got it removed via the rm *--- method, then realized what i hadn't done

thanks for the help!

[salvorhardin]

3. Another way to do it

is to use wildcards.

For instance, if you want to remove every JPEG file in your current directory.

rm *jpg

...or if you want to remove every file that begins with 'PHOTO'

rm PHOTO*

If you want a solid introduction to what you can do via the shell, here's an excellent tutorial.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html

[realisticphish]

4. i did it!

i used the rm *--- method. i just can't figure out why none of the other methods worked

thanks for the tutorial, that;ll be a great help

[salvorhardin]

8. Cool

Just be careful of rm -rf *

...I accidentally wiped out a customer's entire website that way. :-)

[trotsky]

9. A useful "flag" for that command:

rm -i *---

The "-i" makes it interactive, so it will present you with a prompt for every file asking if you're sure you want to delete THAT one. A nice way to double-check - it's really easy to do a lot of damage with "rm" and "*".

[qnr]

7. For future use, here is a script that will replace spaces in a filename

with underscores.

#!/bin/bash
# blank-rename.sh
#
# Substitutes underscores for blanks in all the filenames in a directory.

ONE=1                           # For getting singular/plural right (see below)
number=0                        # Keeps track of how many files actually renamed.
FOUND=0                         # Successful return value.

for filename in *               # Traverse all files in directory
do
        echo "$filename" | grep -q " "                  #  Check whether filename
        if < $? -eq $FOUND >                            #+ contains space(s).
        then
          fname=$filename                               #  Strip off path.
          n=`echo $fname | sed -e "s/ /_/g"`            #  Substitute underscore for blank.
          mv "$fname" "$n"                              #  Do the actual renaming.
          let "number += 1"
        fi
done

if < "$number" -eq "$ONE" >                             #  For correct grammar.
then
  echo "$number file renamed."
else
  echo "$number files renamed."
fi

exit 0

[MazeRat7]

10. Just type the first few characters of the filename then hit tab....

It will "auto complete" the filename for you inserting the necessary escape characters. (provided you gave it enough unique characters for the shell to figure it out) Multiple tab's will show you a list of choices.

I assume this works with the mac terminal, I know it works when I SSH into a mac.

Enjoy,
MZr7