this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 4 points 2 days ago (5 children)

'folder'$'\003'

That's the name of the folder.

[–] ludrol@programming.dev 5 points 2 days ago

What does ls show?

you can escape special charcters with \ something like \'folder\'\$\'\\003\' might work

be careful with rm -rf as you might delete your entire disk if done badly. use some other command to test if it targets the correct directory like ls \'folder\'\$\'\\003\'

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 4 points 2 days ago

‘folder’$‘\003’

Oh that is unpleasantly fiddly to insert all the backslashes to escape the bits. Testing here, (fiddly to even make a dir called that, lol), for fun, instead of just pressing tab, ... is it just the $ and the \ you need to escape? and the ' are fine? Results here are inconclusive, not sure I managed to make a file with the same name, it showing here with extra outer '.

Probably easier to just interactively.... but yeah, in case needing to have it written for a script... probably easiest still to just press tab, to see how it arranges the escape syntax, and paste that into your script. ;)

The fi in fish is friendly interactive, after all.

[–] AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yep as others have noted put a \ in front of each special character. The \ tells the system to treat the following character as a alphanumeric character in the string and not as a operator or a command. Since ', $ and \ are all special characters you will need a \ just before each when typing this name. Also as mentioned do this with a benign command like ls first to make sure your only acting on that specific directory or you might have a bad day.

Edit: How the heck did you get some of those folder names? Looks like a script with incorrect variable/macro substitution made these.

[–] neo@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I believe u should Type

rm -r \'folder\'\$\'\\003\'

Basically a \ interprets the following character as a character. With the ' I’m not sure, so maybe

rm -r 'folder'\$'\\003'

could do the trick too

Edit: correct code

[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl -3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

VyxDqcxlLm2L7Xj.png

After doing the step, the cursor simply came in the centre.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

there is a space between your first \ and the ' that doesn't belong there. (The backslash escapes the space, but not the apostrophe, that's why it's coloured red and not cyan)

Press Ctrl+C and try again with the corrected command.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Are the ~~hyphens~~ apostrophes and the backslash part of the folder name too?

If so, try \'folder\'\$\'\\003\' escaping the ~~hyphens~~ apostrophes ', the dollar sign $ and the backslash \.

[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Do you see the folder with the strange name here ?

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 2 days ago

Oh hey, seeing that has just given me another idea (not sure if anyone else mentioned this yet elsewhere further down in the conversation... but...)

Tried just using a unique portion of the name that's easy to type, along with asterisks for the rest? e.g. rmdir *old*00* (or rm -r if it's not an empty dir you want rid of).

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As the other commenters and I have mentioned, you should try escaping any of the special characters ', $, and \ by a backslash, i.e. \', \$ and \\

[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

rm -rf \'folder\'\$\'\\003\'

[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

sorry, I mean apostrophes.

[–] OrangePumkin@piefed.nl 0 points 2 days ago

Nothing happened.