“rm” doesn't accept internal command as a paramter

Question

Why doesn't this work?

rm $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri  | awk '{gsub("file://","");print $0}')
rm: cannot remove `\'/home/foggy/obrazky/wallpapers/24/Dark_Oxygen_by_Falco101.png\'': No such file or directory

Perhaps there is some character that rm doesn't accept?

Answer 1

Look closely and you'll notice that it has embedded single quotes, which you will have to remove yourself. I would change the awk to a sed:

rm $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri |
     sed -e "s/'//g" -e 's,file://,,g')

(Although actually I would look at exactly what the unmodified output of gsettings looks like first, so as to make something a bit more bulletproof.)

Answer 2

It looks like you have an extra pair of single quote characters around your filename that need to be stripped off.

Here, I have a file named "hello":

$ ls
hello

Trying to delete it with extra single quotes like this:

$ rm "'hello'"

gives exactly the error message you see:

rm: cannot remove `\'hello\'': No such file or directory

the \' before and after the name are single quotes you need to strip off.

EDIT:

In your case (as another answerer has noted) the output of

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri

returns a result like:

'file:///usr/share/backgrounds/Tie_My_Boat_by_Ray_Garc%C3%ADa.jpg'

So you want to strip the leading 'file:// and the ending '. This can be done correctly using sed like this (using only one expression with a group)

sed -e "s|^'file://\(.*\)'$|\1|g"

or maybe easier to read (using two simple expressions)

sed -e "s|^'file://||g" -e "s|'$||"

Please note:

• ^ matches the beginning of the line
• $ matches the end of the line.
• any character can be used in sed to surround the search and replace expressions. Normally, you would use / but in this case it is easier to use something else, so I use |.

Answer 3

This would work too (although not particularly secure):

eval rm $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri  | awk '{gsub("file://","");print $0}')

Answer 4

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri returns a result like:

'file:///usr/share/backgrounds/Tie_My_Boat_by_Ray_Garc%C3%ADa.jpg'

Those single-quotes at the ends are your undoing :-)

I'll assume you're using awk for a reason, and give you two simple solutions which strip the quotes before feeding the output of gsettings to awk:

• cut -d "'" -f2
• tr "'" " "

Stick them in the middle and you're done, e.g.:

rm $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri |   
`cut -d "'" -f2` | sed -e "s/'//g" -e 's,file://,,g')

rm $(gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri |   
`tr "'" " "` | sed -e "s/'//g" -e 's,file://,,g')