Deleting a file, the name of which starts with a hyphen (Linux)

admin — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:08:27 +0000

You might have come across a difficulty in deleting a file in Linux whose name starts with a dash/hyphen.

Adding an escape character (e.g. rm -rf \-filename) or quoting the file name (e.g. rm -rf “-filename”) will not do the job.

The solution is simple: explicitly provide the full or relative path to the file. e.g.:

rm -rf /path/to/-file

or the following – if for instance your current working directory is the one containing the file in question

rm -rf ./-file…

Linux: finding files modified or accessed at a certain time

admin — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:10:11 +0000

The ‘find’ utility is quite handy when used with the proper parameters. Below is a few ways to find files/folders based on the time they were accessed or modified.

Example 1:

find /path/to/folder -type f -name “*.txt” -mtime -5

This will find ‘files’ (-type f) within the folder /path/to/folder (or one of its sub directories), whose name ends with ‘.txt’, and which were modified (mtime) less than 5 days ago

Example 2:

find /path/to/folder -type d -name “stat*” -mtime +10

This would find ‘directories’ (-type d) within the folder /path/to/folder (or one of its subdirectories), whose name …

Tips and Tricks » linux

Deleting a file, the name of which starts with a hyphen (Linux)

Linux: finding files modified or accessed at a certain time