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As others have said, tab-complete should be able to do it. If not, here are two other options:
Is it the only "folder*" in the directory?
$ ls *folder*
‘folder’$‘003’
If you only have that, you should be able to use the wildcards to delete it:
rm *folder*
Another is just find the inode and delete using that:
$ ls -li | grep folder
5120013 .rw-rw-r-- user user 0 B Fri Jun 19 21:09:02 2026 ‘folder’$‘003’
$ find . -inum 5120013 -delete
I have uninstalled and reinstalled my WSL. Nothing exists now.
Tab Completion if you're unsure how to escape characters in this case. Start the name of the folder, then hit TAB a couple times
⬆️⬆️⬆️This⬆️⬆️⬆️
No, it should be:
↹↹↹This↹↹↹
Or even:
Th↹
(Assuming you have a file/folder called "This" and no others starting with "Th")
Can you not rm -rf then tab and select the folder automatically formatted as needed?
Is this homework of some sort?
By default, GNU ls will quote entries containing certain special or unprintable characters. For example, if a file name contains the space character, GNU ls will print e.g. 'hello world'. This quoting is done using Bash syntax.
In Bash, 'folder'$'\003' (or $'folder\003') represents the text folder followed by octal byte 3. Because you use Fish instead of Bash, this doesn't work—it has a different syntax to specify unprintable/special characters.
I can tell you how to refer to this file in Fish, but I hesitate to do it if it's for homework. What I will do is point you to the part of the Fish documentation where this is (kind of) explained: in Fish for bash users#Quoting.
I wouldn't expect homework to use fish. It seems a less useful and niche as a learning exercise.
Would it help to use ls --literal --show-control-chars to find out if \003 is indeed the representation of a special character?
The default output itself is pretty definitive, assuming you are indeed using GNU ls and don't have the QUOTING_STYLE environment variable set. https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Formatting-the-file-names.html explains all this (including your options) and more.
$ touch $'folder\x03'
$ ls --quoting-style shell-escape # the default
'folder'$'\003'
$ ls --quoting-style c
"folder\003"
$ ls --quoting-style escape
folder\003
Fish is the command line shell your using (similar to bash). Usaslly the $ symbol perceeds a variable name, hence the error. Do you have a folder with a $ in the name?
'folder'$'\003'
That's the name of the folder.
What does ls show?
you can escape special charcters with \ something like \'folder\'\$\'\\003\' might work
be careful with rm -rf as you might delete your entire disk if done badly. use some other command to test if it targets the correct directory like ls \'folder\'\$\'\\003\'
‘folder’$‘\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.
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.
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
After doing the step, the cursor simply came in the centre.
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.
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 \.
Do you see the folder with the strange name here ?
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).
As the other commenters and I have mentioned, you should try escaping any of the special characters ', $, and \ by a backslash, i.e. \', \$ and \\
rm -rf command ?
rm -rf \'folder\'\$\'\\003\'
There are no hyphens.
sorry, I mean apostrophes.
Nothing happened.