Rclone ls misformats S3 paths containing ./, displaying /./file as /. /file (inserting a space after the dot) and breaking path consistency vs AWS CLI

[sribala]

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

There appears to be an extra space when running rclone ls on my files with a ‘.’ in the file path, and this extra space does not appear when running aws s3 ls. I believe this may be causing issues with my sync operations and with identifying the files in my aws s3 bucket.
Result from ls command on blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/

file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/./USBL20/usbl20_arch_6n4j3m59_814295_1_1_1/QE7v6qZj1b8w/0000000001

VERSUS --

15728640 ．/USBL20/usbl20_arch_6n4j3m59_814295_1_1_1/QE7v6qZj1b8w/0000000001

Example error from sync operation with file path listed incorrectly --
2026/04/10
21:15:09 ERROR :
file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/．/USBL20/usbl20_arch_d74j577r_814503_1_1_1/UXcvsHFpE8cf/metadata.xml:
Failed to copy: failed to open source object: operation error S3:
GetObject, https response error StatusCode: 404, RequestID:
V2T6GT9FBCT1MPAE, HostID:
OAGSb5P3KdKQ4BPXti5bZQdcKBkwiPwP7VEpath/zJH8YYToav3OleLSL9iF98Y5T4hcsI0Zql5cO90ohhPtwZEk4mDv4nEt,
NoSuchKey :

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.73.3
- os/version: oracle 9.7 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.15.9-201.fc42.aarch64 (aarch64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: arm64 (ARMv8 compatible)
- go/version: go1.25.7 (Red Hat 1.25.7-1.el9_7)
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

AWS S3

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone ls s3:blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/

The rclone config contents with secrets removed.

export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_TYPE=s3
export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_PROVIDER=AWS
export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SESSION_TOKEN=$AWS_SESSION_TOKEN
export RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_REGION=us-east-1

A log from the command with the -vv flag

'''
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.73.3" starting with parameters ["rclone" "-vv" "ls" "s3:blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/"]
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "s3:blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/"
2026/04/14 18:22:58 NOTICE: Config file "/home/ec2-user/.config/rclone/rclone.conf" not found - using defaults
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting type="s3" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_TYPE
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting provider="AWS" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_PROVIDER
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting access_key_id="<REDACTED>" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting secret_access_key="<REDACTED>" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting region="us-east-1" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_REGION
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting session_token="<REDACTED" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SESSION_TOKEN
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : s3: detected overridden config - adding "{IHOpn}" suffix to name
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting provider="AWS" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_PROVIDER
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting access_key_id="<REDACTED>" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting secret_access_key="<REDACTED>" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting region="us-east-1" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_REGION
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : Setting session_token="<REDACTED>" for "s3" from environment variable RCLONE_CONFIG_S3_SESSION_TOKEN
2026/04/14 18:22:58 DEBUG : fs cache: renaming cache item "s3:blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16/" to be canonical "s3{IHOpn}:blepyqf1roltbmxmoyev/file_chunk/2342186146/USBL20/backuppiece/2026-03-16"
'''

[kapitainsky]

This is most likely related to characters’ encoding, as for S3:

$ rclone help flags encoding | grep s3-encoding
--s3-encoding Encoding The encoding for the backend (default Slash,InvalidUtf8,Dot)

regular dot is replaced with with full width variant (which looks like dot with space).

Try rclone ls with --s3-encoding "Slash,InvalidUtf8" flag.

In addition as per docs:

The encoding will also encode these file names as they don't seem to work with the SDK properly:

File name	Replacement
.	．
..	．．

So this is not a bug but the way how rclone works with S3 remotes.