From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 1 14:46:24 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B4E1737B400 for ; Fri, 1 Dec 2000 14:46:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 72871 invoked by uid 100); 1 Dec 2000 22:46:10 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14888.10802.824157.322136@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 16:46:10 -0600 (CST) To: Joe Oliveiro Cc: Larry Rosenman , Daniel.Bye@uk.uu.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pesky file In-Reply-To: References: <14888.4617.148599.530943@guru.mired.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ X-Message: You should get a better mailer. Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Joe Oliveiro types: > rm -rf "-help" > > will remove the file Did you try it before posting? Here's what happened when I tried it: guru$ touch ./-help guru$ rm -rf "-help" rm: illegal option -- h usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ... unlink file guru$ And it's the same reason as before - the leading '-' gets seen by rm as an options indicator, and then 'h' is an illegal option. To remove a file with a leading '-', you have to either hide the leading '-' (which is what ./-help does), or convince rm to not look for options (which is what '--' does). FreeBSD - The BEST upgrade you can do to NT! > > On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Mike Meyer wrote: > > > Larry Rosenman types: > > > * Daniel Bye [001201 05:21]: > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > > > Here's a question for a Friday morning... Somehow, I have ended up with a > > > > file named -help in my home directory. How can I get rid of it? It is 0 > > > > bytes, > > > > and if I try to rm, mv, unlink it etc, the shell interprets the file name as > > > > an > > > > argument to the program and spews forth errors. Backslash escaping it > > > > doesn't work, and neither does quoting it. > > > rm -- -help > > > > > > or rm -i ?help > > > > That won't work any more than "rm *help" would. The problem with both > > of them is that the shell expands the metacharacters, so that rm sees > > the "-" first, so thinks it's an argument. > > > > Just FWIW, if you happen to be on a system that doesn't recognize the > > "--" convention (or need to run a command that doesn't), you can > > always do "rm ./-help". > > > > Trivia question: what two bytes can you *not* put in a Unix filename? > > > > > -- > > Mike Meyer http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ > > Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > > > -- Mike Meyer http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Unix/FreeBSD consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message