Re: Possible bug w/ argument parsing

[Jim Meyering]

Nickolas Wanke <address@hidden> wrote:
| Just emailing to let you know of a problem i've encountered in the argument 
parsing algorithms of quite a few of the gnu fileutils on a linux system.
|
| If you specify a file / directory name starting with a dash, even if it is 
within quotes, the parsing algorithm will assume it is an argument option, and
| issue an invalid option message.
|
| I am assuming this is a bug and not by design, based on my experiences based 
on this problem -- when I found a file simply called "-o"
| on my drive, I could not get rid of it with any of the gnu file utilities, so 
I just had to write my own program which unlink()'d it..
|
| Anyway, I hope that helps, anymore info required and i'll be glad to be of 
assistance.

It's not a bug.
Refer to the file with a leading `./'.  E.g.,

  rm ./-o

Most tools let you use `--' like this, too:

  rm -rf -- -o