Strange directory name, shown with a backslash

Question

I have copied and pasted a directory of files into another.

The result is now this one development\ /

I do not know what that means? Linux does not even recognize it as a directory now.

Also the owner of this directory is wrong. But when I try to do this chown -R zugul /development, the result is: chown: cannot access `/development': No such file or directory

Looks like something went wrong when I have pasted the copied directory. How can I fix this issue?

Solution 1

Your directory name ends with a space (probably a regular space, but it could be some other blank character like an unbreakable space). Depending on what options you passed to ls, the \ either is in the file name or indicates that the next character is to be interpreted literally as part of the file name.

You'll want to rename the directory:

mv /development\  /development

(note the two consecutive spaces: the first is part of the file name and quoted by the preceding backslash, and the second space separates the two arguments). Or

mv '/development ' /development

If there is already a directory called /development, move the files from the /development ​ directory to /development then remove the badly-named directory (rmdir '/development '). Watch out for conflicts (files existing in both).

Once you've settled the naming issue, take care of other things such as ownership.

Solution 2

Your directory name seems to have a space in it.

You can either use quotes:

chown -R zugul "/development /"

Or you can use escape characters:

chown -R zugul /development\ /

Comments

[Admin]

i think the \ is escaping a space. try enclosing the path in double quotes and adding a space

[Vamshi G]

ok but how do I fix the space issue? I cannot even see it the folder live. It fires a 404 error..

[Admin]

ok but how do I fix the space issue? I cannot even see it the folder live. It fires a 404 error..

[Blender]

mv "/development " "/development". Or you can add %20 to your URL: foo.com/development%20

[Admin]

See the edit to the answer. I think you have confused things a little bit. It seems you are mixing the UNIX/Linux shell with Web Access. So you might want to clarify the issue before continuing.