The second case study in the greatest class I will ever take. I will learn how to work with difficultly named files!

Learn how to give commands with poorly named files. I will finish this case study with the knowledge required to call up files with spaces, odd characters, etc.

lab46:~/Documents/badname$ ls
challenge  example  exercise
lab46:~/Documents/badname$ ls -la example/
total 4
drwxr-x--- 2 adahmane lab46 28 Feb 10  2004 .
drwxr-x--- 5 adahmane lab46 51 Sep 17  2010 ..
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46 39 Dec  2  2001 look at me.text
lab46:~/Documents/badname$ ls -la exe     
ls: cannot access exe: No such file or directory
lab46:~/Documents/badname$ ls -la exercise/
total 44
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   43 Feb 10  2004 #pico28903#
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   28 Feb 10  2004 $USER VALUE$
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   23 Feb 10  2004 ( parenthesis & other odd things )
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   72 Feb 10  2004 *** watch out! ***
drwxr-x--- 2 adahmane lab46 4096 Feb 10  2004 .
drwxr-x--- 5 adahmane lab46   51 Sep 17  2010 ..
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   42 Dec  2  2001 ??? can you delete me ???.abc
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   35 Feb 10  2004 `ls` * HI! *
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   50 Dec  2  2001 change my\ name.file
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   52 Dec  2  2001 compress "this" file.data
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   40 Feb 10  2004 just a simple file.txt
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46   46 Feb 10  2004 one, 'two', three, "four"
lab46:~/Documents/badname$ ls -la challenge/
total 4
-rw-r----- 1 adahmane lab46 56 Dec 16  2001 - challenge round -
drwxr-x--- 2 adahmane lab46 32 Sep 28  2012 .
drwxr-x--- 5 adahmane lab46 51 Sep 17  2010 ..

Below are the files I decided to cat using the wildcards learned in the case study…

Using the * wildcard:

lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat comp*
this file has spaces and double quotes in its name.
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat one*
spaces, commas, two types of quotes... oh my!
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat change*
This file has spaces and a backslash in its name.

Using the \ escape character:

lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat \#pico28903# 
laLAA... pretend this is a pico temp file.
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat \*\*\*\ watch\ out\!\ \*\*\* 
Care must be taken when using the '!' symbol, as it deals with history.
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat \?\?\?\ can\ you\ delete\ me\ \?\?\?.abc 
This file has spaces and ?'s in its name.

Using the shell quoting facilities:

lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat "just a simple file.txt" 
Simple, but simpler without the spaces!
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat "( parenthesis & other odd things )" 
Are we having fun yet?
lab46:~/Documents/badname/exercise$ cat "??? can you delete me ???.abc" 
This file has spaces and ?'s in its name.

I had to use the man to figure out the last one:

lab46:~/Documents/badname/challenge$ man rm
lab46:~/Documents/badname/challenge$ rm -- -\ challenge\ round\ - 
rm: remove regular file `- challenge round -'? yes
lab46:~/Documents/badname/challenge$ ls