public/subjects/devops/strange-files

Strange Files

Instructions

Create the following files:

• firstFile which contains Random text inside! and nothing else
• "medium_File!" which contains Random text inside! and nothing else
• "\?$*'Hard_file'*$?\" which contains Random text inside! and nothing else.

Watch the videos:

• Escape Characters

Usage

$ ls | cat -e
"\?$*'Hard_file'*$?\"$
firstFile$
"medium_File!"$
$

Hints

We come across files and folders name very regularly. In most of the cases file/folder names are related to the content of the file/folder and starts with numbers or letters. Alpha-Numeric file name are pretty common and very widely used, but this is not the case when we have to deal with file/folder name that has special characters in them.

Example of most common file names are:

something.txt
alphanum21.txt
674659.txt

Examples of file names that have special characters:

#121day.txt
some/file#.txt
*File$*.txt

When You create a file with some special character, you will need to escape those special characters in order to create that file.

A non-quoted backslash \ is the escape character. The backslash \ preceding a character tells the shell to interpret that special character literally.

Example:

If you want to create a file named foo!\.txt You have to escape the characters like so:

$ touch foo\!\\.txt

• ls. List directory contents.
• touch used to create, change and modify timestamps of a file.

You have to use Man or Google to know more about commands flags, in order to solve this exercise! Google and Man will be your friends!

References

• ls.
• touch.