request for feature, rm --inode

[David Mathog]

Occasionally on Unix one gets a file full of control characters and other
detritus and when that happens "rm" tends to fail because it can't
deal with the resulting file name.   In some instances 

% rm -i foo*

will work, but only if the file in question has some visible tag (like 
"foo") AND the expension of "foo*" doesn't confuse rm and/or the shell.  It
would be very convenient if we could remove these instead via this method: 

% ls tali | head -1
160905 -rw-r--r--    1 safrun   saf       4877438 Dec 20 09:46 toxic_name_here
% rm --inode 160905

The version of "rm" in RH 6.2 (for instance) doesn't allow this.

Regards,

David Mathog
address@hidden
Manager, sequence analysis facility, biology division, Caltech