I have to agree with Esther and others in this thread. It's possible
you've already solved your problem, and just don't realize it.
On the other hand, Esther's post on how to get the file to go away
permanently is quite thorough, and should work if all is setup as
advertised on your system.
Of course, there's always the possibility that none of these things
worked, and we'll need to hunt down other volumes with trash folders
on them, and eliminate them as well. I've noticed the trash seems to
sometimes drop files in trash folders I'd not expect them to go into,
but this just could be me, since I tend to use terminal heavily, and
also tend to forget where I put things, so it could just be me
remembering the wrong info for a recently deleted file.
But, the main thing here is that if terminal simply returns you to
your command-line with no acknowledgement that what you typed was
acted on or not, then it's safe to assume it performed the operation
in question and is simply waiting for the next instruction.
However, I strongly caution against using pseudo as a command
modifier, unless you are told specifically that files can't be
removed when you run the command as yourself, especially if you're
new to terminal and how it works. It's possible (though extremely
unlikely) to wipe out your entire hard drive using the pseudo
command, so it's definitely one to be careful with.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be used, only to use it with care, and be
sure you are where you think you are before trying the command. In
fact, I'd suggest adding one additional command to Esther's list,
before you type the rm-f command, the second command should be
cd .trashes
(that's the word trashes preceded by a period) before typing the rm -
f command. That way, if you're already in the .trashes folder, you
can't erase things outside of that folder.
The only problem with that though is that if you're not truly in
the .trashes folder, you truly will hose your machine. A good rule
of thumb is check your location twice before typing any command that
erases files such as the rm command.
Now, I'll freely admit I rarely do this myself, and it has caused me
grief in the past, but when performing something as drastic as a
remove all files in a folder, I do tend to check at least once, and
usually twice to make sure I'm where I should be.
I broke someone's account several years ago when I performed an rm -f
* on what I thought was a folder under someone's home folder, but
turned out to be their actual home folder, and since they had been
running a mud, needless to say, they were not happy with me about that.
I don't think I need to go into detail about what happened next.
Suffice it to say, they weren't a client much longer.
So, I'll simply leave it at that, and know that although terminal is
powerful, it's also very dangerous, and should be handled with care,
at least when it comes to the rm command. Other than rm, there are
very few unix commands that will do irrepairable damage to your
machine, so it's perfectly safe to experiment. As long as you're a
regular user with no special previleges, you can't break anything
critical, the system won't let you. This is another reason I
strongly recomend having an admin account on your machine for fixing
things, and a regular user nonadmin account that you use on a daily
basis. That way, you can't possibly perform functions that will put
your machine into a nonrepairable state without a bit of work.
But, again, with all that said, really, the terminal isn't a bad
thing, and you might be surprised at how versatile it can be, and
just how much you can accomplish using it. You might want to take
advantage of the take control offer, and grab a copy of their take
control of terminal book. That will get you started on using
terminal, and take a lot of the fear out of it as well. There's some
things not covered in that book such as programming your function
keys, terminal emulation, and serious amounts of command stringing,
though they do touch on it a bit. But, those are things you likely
won't use in your first forays into terminal anyhow, so if terminal
truly is something you want to learn (and everyone should want to
learn it) then, by all means, pick up the book. Joe really does a
good job of explaining things in a straightforward manner.
I did send a comment mentioning the few things I thought could be
added, but got no response, so don't know if they were received or
not. But regardless, It's a good reference to have, even if you only
drop into terminal once or twice in your whole osx career, as it will
explain a lot that may not make sense to you at the moment.
<--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net --->
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