Control Chars in Filename

Ran into a very interesting problem yesterday. Had to do an offline drop of a datafile. Only, when this datafile was created, there must have been finger trouble via the telnet session that was used to do the add datafile.

V$DATAFILE showed the filename. Used that name. Oracle said the datafilename is unknown. Alert log showed the filename as having a control character, e.g. ..../^[[2~filename.dbf (showed up as .../filename.dbf in the V$ table).

How do you drop the datafile?

After some minutes of fruitless attempts, asked a Unix guy and he showed how. Thought that this is the type of info one needs to file under 'never forget'.

Create a sh script in vi and do the drop file statement there. Type the filename as it appears and use vi to create the contol chars. Press CTRL-V in vi. Keep CTRL down and enter the control char, e.g. CTRL-V [ for the ^[[ bit.

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Billy