[sahara]

Okay, this is a last resort post. I have a file that I cannot delete. The name somehow gained illegal characters which show up as "?". No, it isn't a permissions issue. I cannot delete it with sudo rm -Rf. I cannot rename it. "sudo chflags nouchg" hangs when run on that file. ls -lo also hangs. Fsck -fy did nothing. I am running out of options here... any ideas?

[pendragon]

Sometimes third party apps that are designed to force empty stubborn files works. Here are some, but a VersionTracker search of Trash will reveal others.

Cocktail 3.7.1

DropObliter8 1.0

BatChmod 1.37

Force Empty Trash 1.0

iEmpty 1.2

BTW, when you finally get this pesky issue resolved, please post your solution.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by sahara

Fsck -fy did nothing.

Meaning what? It found nothing (wrong), or it couldn't fix something?
(Because, the last marathon thread I read about "illegal chars" turned out to be catalog corruption).

Originally Posted by sahara

I have a file that I cannot delete. The name somehow gained illegal characters which show up as "?". No, it isn't a permissions issue. I cannot delete it with sudo rm -Rf. I cannot rename it. "sudo chflags nouchg" hangs when run on that file. ls -lo also hangs.

Tell us more:
What is the (printable part of the) filename?
Where is now? (Where did it come from?)
Can you isolate it? (i.e., move good files elsewhere so it resides in a directory by itself).

I would hope that something like:
ls -1aB
or
ls -1av | od -cb
would reveal the string of chars.

[aux]

Check this:
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac9...cked/index.php