Search code examples
linuxperlunlink

Could not unlink

I'm totally puzzled with unlink() here:

my $file = "\"/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html\"";
unlink($file) or warn "Could not unlink $file: $!";

will throw

Could not unlink "/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html": No such file or directory

while the file actually exists:

$ ls -l "/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html"
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 413 Mar 25 13:41 /home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html

EDIT: I also tried:

my $file = "/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html";
my $file = '/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html';
my $file = "\'/home/user/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html\'";

Same error.

EDIT2: more tests as required by choroba

Testing the file existence with -f returns false.

Here's a hexdump of the real file name:

$ ls "/home/yasin/Documents/Programming/Perl/extracted/Prueba con formateo HTML/msg-2575-4.html" | hexdump -c
0000000   /   h   o   m   e   /   y   a   s   i   n   /   D   o   c   u
0000010   m   e   n   t   s   /   P   r   o   g   r   a   m   m   i   n
0000020   g   /   P   e   r   l   /   e   x   t   r   a   c   t   e   d
0000030   /   P   r   u   e   b   a       c   o   n       f   o   r   m
0000040   a   t   e   o       H   T   M   L   /   m   s   g   -   2   5
0000050   7   5   -   4   .   h   t   m   l  \n                        
000005a
Solution 
  • my $file = "\"/home/.../msg-2575-4.html\"";
unlink($file)

    is the equivalent of doing

    rm "\"/home/.../msg-2575-4.html\""

    Obviously, the correct shell command is

    rm "/home/.../msg-2575-4.html"

    so you want

    my $file = "/home/.../msg-2575-4.html";
unlink($file)

    or

    my $file = '/home/.../msg-2575-4.html';
unlink($file)

    If that second rm command works, so does that Perl command.