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How to remove file (which has white space in name) from Unix?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Apr 5 '11 at 9:22

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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Another format:

rm file\ with\ spaces\ in\ the\ name
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up vote 2 down vote

Use quotes to surround the file name:

rm "file with a space.txt"

Update: use the quotes to enclose the whole path to the file:

rm "../dir with spaces/file with spaces.txt"

The quotes tell the shell command to interpret the quoted string as one argument (so you can use this with most shell commands).

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@Dave Nice, beat me by 7 seconds – Joshua Feb 11 '11 at 6:14
if i need to delete from parent directory or somewhere else, then? – Gaurav Feb 11 '11 at 6:21
You can always give rm the full path, starting with /blah\ blah. – klang Feb 12 '11 at 7:07
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up vote 0 down vote

If you do it manually in your shell (and the filename is more or less unique, i.e. it differs from other filenames not in the positions where whitespaces are) you can use TAB completion. Just type a few letters of the beginning of the filename and hit TAB. Repeat this until the filename is complete.

rm fi(press TAB)

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up vote 0 down vote

Have you tried:

unlink 'path/to/my file with spaces in the name'

Edit: You might also consider changing your paths to not have spaces, using, perhaps, this script.

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if i need to delete from parent directory or somewhere else, then? – Gaurav Feb 11 '11 at 7:30
@Gaurav see @Dave Bachers' answer for something straight forward (he beat me to it). – Joshua Feb 11 '11 at 7:46
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