Unix: ls -la reveals 4 files, one of which should be impossible, affecting other files

Asked Oct 01 '14 at 17:05

Active Oct 01 '14 at 17:05

Viewed 46 times

Ive got a directory that contains a parmFile. I need to read a text file by line and input the parsed text into the parmFile. In my parmFile directory, when I type the list all command, I have the following:

bash: $ ls -la
total 8
-rw-r--r--    1 admin admin               0 Aug 26 12:57 -1
drwxrwxr-x    2 admin admingrp          256 Sep 30 13:45 .
drwxrwxr-x    9 admin admingrp         4096 Jun 02 11:22 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 admin admingrp            0 Oct 01 12:27 parmfile

Does anyone have any clue what the -1 file is? How do I delete this thing?

asked Oct 01 '14 at 17:05

R4F6

1

Apperently I can delete the file with "rm ./-1" but I still have no idea what this file is or where it came from? – R4F6 Oct 01 '14 at 17:06
How/why should it be impossible? – Charles Duffy Oct 01 '14 at 17:07
2

You could also have deleted it with `rm -- -1`; for this reason, `rm -- *` is better practice than `rm *`. – Charles Duffy Oct 01 '14 at 17:07
2

There are only two characters which aren't allowed in POSIX filenames -- `/` (because it's reserved for separating path elements), and NUL. Everything else is entirely possible. (This means that programs or scripts that assume that filenames can't contain newlines are broken -- often, dangerously so). – Charles Duffy Oct 01 '14 at 17:08
...also, what do you mean by "affecting other files"? – Charles Duffy Oct 01 '14 at 17:09
1

Do you know why you have such a file? – Basile Starynkevitch Oct 01 '14 at 20:26
I have no idea how it even got there. Thats what I didnt understand. – R4F6 Oct 02 '14 at 17:34

Unix: ls -la reveals 4 files, one of which should be impossible, affecting other files

0 Answers0