can't delete folder

Trying to delete a folder that was created when extracting a zip archive.
When I right click and select “move to trash” an error message pops up and says “The file or folder . . . . does not exist”

I know it exists because I can see it and am trying to delete it.
Tried logging in as root and deleting it and got the same message.
Extracted the zip archive to another location and tried deleting that one and get exactly the same message. Now I have two instances of a folder I can’t delete.

Any ideas on what I can do to delete this folder?

Try emptying the trash can first. There’s a limit on how much trash you can have in the can.

Then if it’s a file you want to delete run this command: rm /path_to/filename
Or if it’s a folder then run this instead: rm -Rf /path_to/folder_name

Be very careful with the second one, it’s recursive (meaning it will delete all the subdirectories too, so don’t make a typo).

trash is empty.

Using your command I get the error


bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

this is the name of the folder I am trying to delete

(ALBUM) ����� (2005.11.23) - Ken Hirai 10th Anniversary Complete Single Collection �f95-�f05 ���o�J (192k)

the folder appears to be empty

That is a weird file name lots of unusual characters.

try putting the name in quotes. ie

rm -r ./"(ALBUM) ����� (2005.11.23) - Ken Hirai 10th Anniversary Complete Single Collection �f95-�f05 ���o�J (192k)"

you would need to be in the directory that contains this directory.

You also may try auto completion because of the apparent untypable characters.

type
rm -r ./"(A
then press tab see if the shell will complete the name then press "
might work

Excellent - that worked - thank you very much.

File name contains Japanese characters. The original zip files I can view the Japanese characters fine but when unzipped everything goes wrong.
No idea with the problem is there - never come across this before.

OK, I have the same problem. The Auto complete did not solve the problem. I get “cannot remove … no such file or directory”

Might there be an other solution? tried logging in as user, as root, tried to delete from dolphin (as user and as root) tried to delete from terminal with rm (as user and as root)

is there an other option? the stupid file is 1.3GB, would like to get rid of it…

Is there a way to delete from outside Suse (Suse 11.1, KDE3)?

Thx 4 your help!

Well, actually you two do not want to remove the extracted folder but keep it, right? You might try a handy too called ‘convmv’ (available via ‘OSS’), which will convert the folder / its content to the correct encoding.

convmv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 -r someFolder*

…will not convert the folder yet but do a test first. When the output seems okay, do

convmv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 -r --notest someFolder*

Note that it works with wildcards, too (so does ‘rm’).