Re: Frustrating 'feature'

[Paul Jarc]

"Meyer, Duane" <address@hidden> writes:
> I have managed to create a file that begins with '-r' and contains
> several other '-'(dash) characters throughout. [...] Why, if I
> enclose the thing in double quotes, single quotes, spackle it with
> '\' escapes, would the program try to read the first two characters
> as anything other than part of the name?

The shell is the only thing that ever sees the quotes.  By the time mv
or rm is invoked, it's just a string that starts with -, so it gets
treated as an option string.  Prefix it with "./", and it'll look like
a filename.


paul