Summary Box
A perennial problem is deleting files that have strange characters (or other oddities) in their names. The next few articles contain some hints for the following:
Deleting files with random control characters in their names (Section 14.12).
Deleting files whose names start with a dash (Section 14.13).
Deleting files with "unprintable" filenames (Section 14.14).
Deleting files by using the inode number (Section 14.15).
Deleting directories and problems that can arise as a result (Section 14.16).
We'll also give hints for these:
Deleting unused (or rarely used) files (Section 14.17).
Deleting all the files in a directory, except for one or two (Section 14.18).
Most tips for deleting files also work for renaming the files (if you want to keep them): just replace the rm command with mv.
— ML