From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!cires!nbires!ut-ngp!san Newsgroups: net.sources Title: Rm ABC? Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.168 Posted: Fri Feb 18 14:49:27 1983 Received: Sun Feb 20 05:06:39 1983 Seeing as we had a similar problem using our 4.1BSD system, I thought I'd throw in my two cents worth... some systems allowed the creation of a file with characters having the most-significant bit turned on (ala 0200). Unfortunately, but logically (?) so, it seems that all programs that deal with directories make SURE to turn off that MSB, so (for example) you can get ``rm -i'' to print a vague resemblence of the files name, but upon approving removal of it, ``rm'' will complain strenously to the tune of ``file non-existent'', or some such error. I have been unfortunate enough to come across this problem on both a 4.1BSD system and a V7M system, The fix for all of this has probably been published, so I hesitate to take up more space, but just in case........ On 4.1BSD there is a one or two line fix in the kernel to ``chr &= 0177'' when creating a file. As far as V7M, I haven't tried, though I would imagine it would be similar. The quick/dirty solution is to change/create a program to run through the named directory, accepting a filename WITH the MSB on, and attempt to remove it Fortunately the system will accept those filenames as arguments to ``unlink''. Note that I had no luck trying to match the characters with meta-characters, no one knows/cares about the MSB on a filenames characters. If anyone wants the fix to a 4.1BSD kernel, I'll be happy to send them a copy and/or where it goes Steve Sanderson ...!nbires!ut-ngp!san san@utexas-11 P.s. this assumes that you DON'T want MSB's to be able to be turned on.