How to Handle files with a strange name in linux shell

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Dec 6, 2010

[ Thanks to linuxaria for this link.
]

“Sometimes it happen to find in our file system files
with strange names, with that i means files with non-alphanumeric
characters or spaces between different words, maybe uploaded by
users, or files produced by mistake by someone or some program, and
unfortunately is often not trivial to do a mv < file > or rm
< file >.

“Let’s see how to get rid of these horrors.

“Case #1, space-separated file.

“Suppose you have:

ls -1

file2.txt
test file.txt

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.