Re: \n in filenames

perl -e 'unlink glob("*\n");'

Update: A little explanation. A glob (distinct from a typeglob) is a kind of simplified regex for filenames. All unix shells use them, as does DOS in a further simplified form. Perl glob() follows the csh style of filename globbing in its argument, returning a list of all matching file names. The diamond operator applied to a bare string, as in print <*.txt>;, is another way to use them, but glob() is a better choice when interpolation of variables (or "\n") must be done.

After Compline,
Zaxo

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Re: Re: \n in filenames by Elliott (Pilgrim) on Oct 21, 2001 at 02:23 UTC
Thank you Zaxo. It worked. With the added bonus that the script deleted itself, of course (not the kind of script you want to leave lying around!) I don't really understand why it worked or why `unlink "\n"` [download] or just `unlink ""`didn't work. I read the glob section in the Camel book and I'm not much wiser.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Re: \n in filenames by Fletch (Bishop) on Oct 21, 2001 at 05:05 UTC
This is because `unlink` is calling the underlying system call `unlink` which doesn't grok globs. You could do something like this: `opendir( CUR, "whateverdir" ) or die "opendir: $!\n"; do { unlink or warn "unlink " . quotemeta($_) . ": $!\n"} for grep /\n$/, readdir( CUR ); closedir( CUR );` [download] And just for reference, a non-perl solution would be to use something like this (which uses a find-ism (`-print0`) which may not work everywhere). `$ find -name "*\n" -print0 \| xargs -0 rm` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]