[Novalug] Two files with the same name: Hunh?!

Charles M Howe cmhowe@patriot.net
Tue Jan 13 11:16:33 EST 2009


First of all, I am going to terminate this thread and start a better
one , or maybe two, for two different problems.

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 10:35 -0500, Clif Flynt wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:44:14PM -0500, Charles M Howe wrote:
> > Evidently I have two identically named files, but so far, at least, I
> > have been able to find only one using "ls". I haven't yet given the
> > matter much thought, because so far I don't seem to be in much danger --
> > and I want to keep it that way.
> 
That isn't what I am saying. What I AM saying is that the first time I
issued the edit command I get a canned text file which tell me how to
proceed. It is not, and does not purport to be, the subject file,
phone-list-a. Mainly it is a help file with a set of choices to click
on.

More later, maybe as long as two or three days.

Yes, I blather. I prefer to think that I have many senior moments, not
brain farts. There is no odor from a senior moment.

Charlie, getting back on track after a senior moment

>   The odds are very poor that you have two identically named
> files.  The odds are much better that there is a leading or trailing
> space, tab or some other non-printing character in one filename, there
> is an l in one name and a 1 in the other, or some such.
> 
>   You might try something like opening an xterm window
> cd to the appropriate directory and
> for i in *phon*
> do
> echo ..$i..
> done
> 
>   That would show you a leading/trailing non-printer like a space.
> 
>   Or you could use the 
> --show-control-chars
>   to 'ls'.
> 
>   Once you identify the file that's not really named what you
> thought it was named, I'd rename or remove it.
> 
>   rm -i is an interactive removal tool, assuming that you can
> tell the difference between the two files.
> 
>   Good luck,
>   Clif




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