Canot mv or cp file having name beginning with $ 2

[RCPD700]

My searching has not been able to find an answer to this, so I'm hoping someone here may have a solution.

I was doing some clean-up of unneeded files and found 3 files having names that begin with a dollar sign.

If I use [blue]cat[/blue] or [blue]more[/blue] to try to view the file, cat hangs and more responds "0652-252 Cannot take input from a terminal".

I then attempted to rename the files using [blue]mv[/blue] but it responds "mv: 0653-401 Cannot rename to...".

If I put the file name in quotes like:
[blue]mv "$filename" filename.txt[/blue], mv responds with
"mv: 0653-401 Cannot rename to ./filename.txt:
A file or directory in the path name does not exist."

If I use [blue]cp[/blue] to copy to a new name, I get a couple different responses.

If I do [blue]cp $filename newfilename.txt[/blue] cp insists on showing me its usage note. If I put the source name in quotes, the response is:
"cp: 0653-436 . is a directory.
Specify -r or -R to copy."

The files are in a directory I own and have access rights of 640 (which I am also unable to change). I retried all commands as root with the same results.

I'm still pretty inexperienced in AIX/UNIX so I'm really stuck on this. Any ideas?

In case you're wondering, these files came over during our migration from the mainframe well over a year ago... the mainframe had no problems with such file names.

Thanks in advance for any solutions.

 

[p5wizard]

escape the $ with single quotes or a backslash

either
[tt]mv '$filename' dollarfilename[/tt]
or
[tt]mv \$filename dollarfilename[/tt]


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[RCPD700]

You da man" p5wizard! Both suggestions worked perfectly and I was able to successfully rename the files. More importantly, I have learned something.

Thanks you very much!

RCPD700

[small]Running 4 p550's (9133-55A)[/small]

 

[p5wizard]

Well, that's two of the reasons I participate in these forums: to help and to teach...

HTH,

p5wizard

 

[MainlyiSeries]

I'm a new AIX admin and our main frame folks are ftping files with single quotes at beginning an end.

Example;
'PLAW.NFT.ARITRANS.XT400.CVT'

After reading your post for the $filename I applied your technique to rename this file to dummyfile:

mv \'PLAW.NFT.ARITRANS.XT400.CVT\' dummyfile

Worked like a Champ! You are da MAN! Thank you.

Newbie AIX admin

 

[KenCunningham]

Two for the price of one, p5!

The internet - allowing those who don't know what they're talking about to have their say.

 

[2rArne]

Escaping or quoting is one of the basic methods for handling special characters in unix.

Also note that spaces can be a challenge, and might also impose a risk since a parameter/name can accidentally be mistreated as several individual parameters.

Example: Filename with spaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 0 May 12 19:59 My File With Spaces

Also keep in mind that wild characters (regexp) can sometimes help you.

If you want to remove such files manually, you can use rm -i
... and get prompted for each file
> rm -i My*
rm: Remove My File With Spaces? y
rm: Remove MyFileToKeep?
> ls -l My*
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 0 May 12 20:06 MyFileToKeep
>

/2r

 

[blarneyme]

One can also set an array in the shell to remove the file by its index as shown below:

ls

$testfile testfile1 testfile2

rm $testfile

Usage: rm [-firRe] [--] File...

ls

$testfile testfile1 testfile2

set -A files $(ls .)

echo ${files[*]}

$testfile testfile1 testfile2

echo ${files[0]}

$testfile

rm ${files[0]}

ls

testfile1 testfile2