[X-Unix] Unlinking a file... illegal characters?

[Stroller]

On Feb 26, 2005, at 2:39 am, William H. Magill wrote:
>
> On 25 Feb, 2005, at 12:07, Stroller wrote:
>>>> Unfortunately:
>>>>
>>>>   $ ls legoland/
>>>>   e??y??y??y??vk??????..??????
>>>>   339 /Volumes/CLEARLIGHT/foo $ ls -lFa -i legoland/
>>>>   ls: e??y??y??y??vk??????..??????: File name too long
>>>>   total 128
>>>>   731381 drwxrwxrwx  1 stroller  admin  32768 22 Nov 03:27 ./
>>>>   772975 drwxrwxrwx  1 stroller  admin  32768 25 Feb 01:53 ../
>>>>   $
>> Would I be over-optimistic if I suggested that a different quoting 
>> method in the script might fix this? As you suggested, I thought 
>> about writing a program to do the job, but I never got as far in C as 
>> file-handling.
>
> Have you tried emacs?
> ...
> Emacs "dired" will usually deal with all of the "weird" issues 
> associated with "obscure" character sets i.e. non-ascii. It's 
> particularly useful when the file name has actual embedded control 
> characters in it (often inserted by hackers to prevent file discovery 
> and manipulation or removal).
> ...
> cd to the directory involved.
> launch emacs
> type "escape-x-dired" and just hit return when it asks for the 
> directory.
>
> You can then use the arrow keys to navigate down the lines of the 
> buffer.
> Select one file and press "d" ("u" is the inverse) and a "D" will 
> appear in the left margin.
> Type  "x" and emacs will prompt
> delete "....." (yes or no)

Unfortunately it doesn't allow me to identify the file.
Results shown at <http://mac.stroller.uk.eu.org/Emacs.gif>
Mr Dyballa has already suggested a reason in his posting of Feb 25, 
2005, at 10:26 am.

> Since this is "legoland" something, I would assume that the file name 
> is full of "foreign" (Danish) characters encoded via something other 
> than utf-8.

It's part of a big back-up of a customer's PeeCee, the rest of which 
was zipped, burned to DVD & deleted. It was originally in "Program 
Files", and I'm sure that this is just some file from the installation 
of one of the Lego-branded computer games. Since I regularly back-up 
PCs' whole C: drives to my portable drive by booting to a Linux liveCD 
& using `cp -Rvf ...` many thousands of files might be copied on & off 
this drive each week - my guess is simple filesystem corruption.

Stroller.