I have a folder on my hard disk which has a whitespace at the end of the folder name for example: "folder_name " (i must have named it this way by accident)
The folder does not show up in Finder, but when i cd to the parent directory at the terminal and do an 'ls' i can see it. when i do an 'ls -l' i get a "no such file or directory" error and like wise when i try to move or copy it. Filename auto completion at the terminal also shows that the folder seems to be there but I can't seem to access it.

The filesystem type is FAT32, and it is an external drive, so i might try taking it to a windows or linux box and see what happens. does anyone have any suggestions how i may possibly fix this since there a some important files in this folder?
Thanks.

maybe it doesn't work but try to use quotes "directory "
it may work

still, try to find an app like midnight commander, it's a file manager
there should be a ppc version somewhere

try to rename the directory

midnight commander can see the directory but it has a time stamp of jan 1st 1970 and size 0 KB and it is unable to read it's contents! i'm gonna see if there are any freeware or trial version utils to recover erased data...

thank god for cd backups!