How to remove files by their inode

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Geekster — 3 Comments ↓

Sometimes we have to remove files with weird names, like “-h”. rm -h does not work because the shell sees “-h” as a command option.

So, how can we delete these file? Simple: by it’s inode.

A file’s inode can be found with ls -li or stat.
Every file has an unique inode (big number). The inode is like the user’s UID.

$ ls -li 428316 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2012-05-31 22:21 -h

The inode is the 6 digits number from the first column of the ls -li output.

Finding a file’s inode with stat:

$ stat -- -h | grep -i inode Device: 801h/2049d Inode: 428316 Links: 1

Now, I will delete -h by it’s inode with the following command:

find . -inum INODENUMBER -exec rm -i {} +

Type y for yes and n for no, in order to delete the file, or not.

$ find . -inum 428316 -exec rm -i {} + rm: remove regular empty file `./-h'? y
ls -l total 0

The -h file can also be deleted with rm – – “-h” . (there is no space between the two minus characters)

$ ls -h $ rm -- "-h"