[HDFS-3557] provide means of escaping special characters to `hadoop fs` command

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Not A Problem
• Affects Version/s: 0.20.2
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Jeff Hodges
• Created: 22/Jun/12 18:39
• Updated: 22/Apr/16 11:57
• Resolved: 22/Apr/16 11:57

Description

When running an investigative job, I used a date parameter that selected multiple directories for the input (e.g. "my_data/2012/06/

{18,19,20}

"). It used this same date parameter when creating the output directory.

But `hadoop fs` was unable to ls, getmerge, or rmr it until I used the regex operator "?" and mv to change the name (that is, `-mv output/2012/06/?18,19,20? foobar").

Shells and filesystems for other systems provide a means of escaping "special characters" generically, but there seems to be no such means in HDFS/`hadoop fs`. Providing one would be a great way to make accessing HDFS more robust.