my home directory appears in my download directory

Question

In my Downloads folder when I run ls I see the home directory, and I don't know why, I want to remove it but I am afraid to remove my home folder. Can anyone tell me how I can just remove the home directory in the Downloads folder and keep it in the root folder ?

here you can see a picture of what I get when I run ls command in the Downloads directory:

when I run the command:ls -la this what I get:

-rw------- 1 root root 1024 nov 28 20:24 ~

It is just a file called `~`, not actually your home directory. — Celada, Jan 13 '16 at 22:45
What does `ls -l ~/Downloads` produce? (I think @Celada is correct, just double-checking) — Fabby, Jan 13 '16 at 23:02
it produces this: `-rw------- 1 root root 1024 nov 28 20:24 ~ ` — rainman, Jan 13 '16 at 23:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

1

You are seeing a file named ~ in the Downloads directory; that symbol also happens to refer to your home directory, when used at the beginning of an unquoted string (here is what bash does).

To remove the file, you have many options; here are two of the simplest:

rm ~/Downloads/~
cd ~/Downloads && rm ./~

Add the -i flag to any of the rm commands to have it prompt you before removing the file.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Jan 14 '16 at 03:03

Jeff Schaller

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and if i remove it i will not lose my original home directory ? – rainman Jan 14 '16 at 17:07
Correct. Just type one of those two commands – Jeff Schaller Jan 14 '16 at 17:28

my home directory appears in my download directory

1 Answers1