From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Dec 1 15:40:17 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 70C5237B6D9 for ; Fri, 1 Dec 2000 15:32:09 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 74108 invoked by uid 100); 1 Dec 2000 23:32:08 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14888.13560.811822.742841@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 17:32:08 -0600 (CST) To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: Mike Meyer , Larry Rosenman , Daniel.Bye@uk.uu.net, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Pesky file In-Reply-To: <20001201225640.A2189@buffy.local> References: <119603073@toto.iv> <14888.4617.148599.530943@guru.mired.org> <20001201225640.A2189@buffy.local> 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 Cliff Sarginson types: > On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 03:03:05PM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote: > > Larry Rosenman types: > > > 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. > You are wrong btw, "rm -- -help" will work just fine :) > "--" is a feature of rm (and mv etc) to get around this very problem. > Before saying "that's wont work", take 23 seconds to try it out. Actually, I *knew* it would work. What doesn't work is "rm -i ?help". I thought I made it clear which of the two I was talking about in the second paragraph of my post, which elided: : 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". I'm sorry I wasn't explicit enough for you, Cliff. 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