How to delete or access a file with a backslash \ in its name?

Question

I have some files here that I copied over to this linux box using the python module pysftp:

[jm@spartan tf]$ ls -la
total 0
drwxrwxrwx. 3 jm jm  69 Aug 14 13:50 .
drwxrwxrwt. 9 root    root    238 Aug 14 13:49 ..
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 jm jm   0 Aug 14 13:49 .\gitkeep
drwxrwxrwx. 2 jm jm   6 Aug 14 13:50 .\innerfile
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 jm jm   0 Aug 14 13:50 .\innerfile\gitkeep
[jm@spartan tf]$ rm .\gitkeep
rm: cannot remove ‘.gitkeep’: No such file or directory

They're hidden, so I'm still trying to figure out how to copy then over so they aren't hidden, but in the mean time I want to delete them, but I'm unable to. What's going on here?

I'm on CentOS 7.

Answer 1

What you really need to do is to fix your script so it converts the windows paths to Unix paths. One relatively easy way to do that is to take path separators out of the equation: rather than providing full path names to copy, you recursively walk directories, creating target directories on the remote side and specifying only the filename rather than the full path. :)

But until you get to that point, you need to protect the backslashes from the shell. You can do that by quoting using single quotes (backslashes are interpreted for some characters inside double quotes). Note specifically that the wildcard is outside of the quotes so the shell treats it as a wildcard rather than a literal *: :)

rm -rv '.\'*

Or you can do that by escaping the backslash (which would also work in double quotes, but the double quotes aren't needed here):

rm -rv .\\*

I would suggest that, before you remove stuff using a wildcard, you always first run ls with the same arguments, then use the up arrow to recall the last command, where you can change the ls to an rm. That way you can see the list of files before it's removed, preventing a potentially big mistake. :) I'm also a big fan of using -v with rm in cases like this.

sauer@lightning:/tmp> ls -vr .\\*
.\innerfile\gitkeep  .\gitkeep

.\innerfile:
sauer@lightning:/tmp> rm -vr .\\*
removed '.\gitkeep'
removed directory '.\innerfile'
removed '.\innerfile\gitkeep'

Answer 2

Since the filenames contain an escape character \, you need to escape that escape character.

rm .\\gitkeep .\\innerfile\\gitkeep
rmdir .\\innerfile 

will remove your files

Answer 3

If everything else failed, you can do the following to delete files and folders that have backslashes or weird characters in their names:

rm -iR *

The above command will start the process of deleting everything on the folder where you are. However, it will prompt you before deleting each file or folder:

rm: remove regular file `.\gitkeep? y
rm: remove regular file `.\innerfile\gitkeep'? y

You will need to type "y" and press [Enter] for each file or folder that you want to delete. If you come across a file or folder that you do NOT want to delete, type "n" and press [Enter].

If you are still being prompted for all your remaining files & folders but you have already deleted what you wanted to, just press the following key combination:

[Ctrl] + [c]