Remove Files By Inode Number (Linux/UNIX/Mac OS X)
Recently I needed to delete some pesky files that at some point managed to get created. The problem with these ‘pesky’ files is that they don’t have file-friendly names. One of the files was named “!” (no quotes), and another was “-20080605.log”
I know I could remove them by using the rm command prefixing the unacceptable characters with “\” but I also recall a method to remove files by their inode number.
$ rm \!; rm -20080606.log;
For a refresher, a quick google gave me this resourceful site.
In summary:
1. Get the inode number of the file you want…
$ ls -li
Output:
2396291 -rw-rw-r– 1 user user 35 2008-06-05 09:37 -20080605.log
The inode number is 2396291.
2. Delete the file using the inode number found from step 1.
$ find . -inum 2396291 -exec rm -i {} \;
