Lost dotfiles in symlink loop

Question

In the process of symlinking my dotfiles (.vimrc, .zshrc, .bashrc etc.) I wrote a simple ruby script to do this for me so I could switch between two different sets of dotfiles... however in the process I made a dumb mistake, and ended up linking my backup files as symlinks of the home folder copies, and vice versa... making them not accessible (vi says permission denied)

So I tried unlinking the backups, and now the files read 'no such file or directory' in my home folder, yet 'locate .zshrc' tells me its there. I realize it would have been prudent to push them to a repo first. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

locate works off of a cached database; you'll have to updatedb (possibly with root) in order to update said database.Unfortunately, that means said files are probably gone forever.