Remove a file on Linux using the inode number

Question

If you create a file on UNIX/Linux with special characters, such as touch \"la*, you can't remove it with rm "la*. You have to use the inode number (you can if you add the \ before the name, I know, but you'd have to guess as a user that it was used in the file creation).

I checked the manpage for rm, but there's no mention of the inode number. Doing rm inodenumber doesn't work either.

What is the command for this?

Solution 1

Some other methods include:

escaping the special chars:

[~]$rm \"la\*

use the find command and only search the current directory. The find command can search for inode numbers, and has a handy -delete switch:

[~]$ls -i
7404301 "la*

[~]$find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -inum 7404301
./"la*

[~]$find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -inum 7404301 -delete
[~]$ls -i
[~]$

Solution 2

Maybe I'm missing something, but...

rm '"la*'

Anyways, filenames don't have inodes, files do. Trying to remove a file without removing all filenames that point to it will damage your filesystem.

Solution 3

I use this always:

# retrieve the inode number
sav@ubuntu:~$ ls -il
total 8
415984 -rw-rw-r-- 1 sav sav    0 Apr 11 10:07 '"la*'
417981 drwxrwxr-x 2 sav sav 4096 Apr 11 09:44  ]rf
415985 -rw-rw-r-- 1 sav sav   11 Apr  8 16:24  text

# use find/delete
find . -inum 415984 -delete

Solution 4

You can delete files starting with a dash by calling rm -- filename.

Solution 5

The challenge I had was removing a filename that starts with a dash - rm always wants to interpret it as a hostname. I solved this by using:

rm ./-g4xxx

View more solutions

Comments

[Danzzz]

well, this would only work for the current directory, but it's indeed a valid cause for concern. Stupid that I missed that. Still doesn't remove the file though.

[Arrorn]

Heh, using find would certainly be easier than my suggestion, I'd never noticed -inum :)

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

Of course not. The file is only removed when there are no more filenames pointing to it and no processes holding it open.

[John T]

Find has a lot of great switches to be explored, it's my swiss army knife tool to be quite honest :)

[akira]

t: oh so true.

[guthrie]

Solaris doesn't have the "-delete" of "-maxdepth" options.

[can-ned_food]

It should be noted that clri is usually only present on Oracle systems (e.g. SunOS).

[Jonas Berlin]

You should limit the search with the -xdev option since other mounted filesystems might have also have unrelated files with the same inode number.

[I say Reinstate Monica]

This appears to be a comment on this answer rather than an answer to the OP's question.

[Laryx Decidua]

Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. Note that the attempt to escape the dash does not work (at least it doesn't under Ubuntu 18.04 where I tried it in vain).

[Pierre-Olivier Vares]

@LaryxDecidua Escaping is not what is needed here : unescape is done by the shell, before passing the argument to the command. And rm won't unescape its args, so a double-escaping "rm \\\\-xxx" (4 backslashes, to escape the backslahes themselves...) will only result in rm trying to remove a file named "\-xxx" which doesn't exist.

[Kalsan]

This is great on systems where rm -i stands for interactive instead of inode

[I'm Root James]

worked perfectly