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Question: How do I remove a file with funny characters in the filename ?

Answer: If the 'funny character' is a '/', skip to the last part of this answer. If the funny character is something else, such as a ' ' or control character or character with the 8th bit set, keep reading.

The classic answers are
rm -i some*pattern*that*matches*only*the*file*you*want
which asks you whether you want to remove each file matching the indicated pattern; depending on your shell, this may not work if the filename has a character with the 8th bit set (the shell may strip that off);
and
rm -ri .
which asks you whether to remove each file in the directory. Answer "y" to the problem file and "n" to everything else. Unfortunately this doesn't work with many versions of rm. Also unfortunately, this will walk through every subdirectory of ".", so you might want to "chmod a-x" those directories temporarily to make them unsearchable. Always take a deep breath and think about what you're doing and double check what you typed when you use rm's "-r" flag or a wildcard on the command line;
and
find . -type f ... -ok rm '{}' ;
where "..." is a group of predicates that uniquely identify the file. One possibility is to figure out the inode number of the problem file (use "ls -i .") and then use find . -inum 12345 -ok rm '{}' ; or find . -inum 12345 -ok mv '{}' new-file-name ;

"-ok" is a safety check - it will prompt you for confirmation of the command it's about to execute. You can use "-exec" instead to avoid the prompting, if you want to live dangerously, or if you suspect that the filename may contain a funny character sequence that will mess up your screen when printed

If the 'funny character' is a '/', skip to the last part of this answer. If the funny character is something else, such as a ' ' or control character or character with the 8th bit set, keep reading.

The classic answers are
rm -i some*pattern*that*matches*only*the*file*you*want
which asks you whether you want to remove each file matching the indicated pattern; depending on your shell, this may not work if the filename has a character with the 8th bit set (the shell may strip that off);
and
rm -ri .
which asks you whether to remove each file in the directory. Answer "y" to the problem file and "n" to everything else. Unfortunately this doesn't work with many versions of rm. Also unfortunately, this will walk through every subdirectory of ".", so you might want to "chmod a-x" those directories temporarily to make them unsearchable. Always take a deep breath and think about what you're doing and double check what you typed when you use rm's "-r" flag or a wildcard on the command line;
and
find . -type f ... -ok rm '{}' ;
where "..." is a group of predicates that uniquely identify the file. One possibility is to figure out the inode number of the problem file (use "ls -i .") and then use find . -inum 12345 -ok rm '{}' ; or find . -inum 12345 -ok mv '{}' new-file-name ;

"-ok" is a safety check - it will prompt you for confirmation of the command it's about to execute. You can use "-exec" instead to avoid the prompting, if you want to live dangerously, or if you suspect that the filename may contain a funny character sequence that will mess up your screen when printed Source: CoolInterview.com

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