Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 19:03:35 -0500 From: Ryan Younce <ryan@manunkind.org> To: Joe Oliveiro <joe@advancewebhosting.com> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Larry Rosenman <ler@lerctr.org>, Daniel.Bye@uk.uu.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pesky file Message-ID: <20001201190335.A35590@cheshire.manunkind.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012011703120.17623-100000@joe.pythonvideo.com>; from joe@advancewebhosting.com on Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 05:03:22PM -0500 References: <14888.4617.148599.530943@guru.mired.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012011703120.17623-100000@joe.pythonvideo.com>
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Thus spake Joe Oliveiro <joe@advancewebhosting.com>:
> rm -rf "-help"
>
> will remove the file
There's one reason why that will not work, and that is because "-help"
(without the quotes) will be passed to rm as argv[2], and the getopt()
calls within rm will parse it just as they would any other option string.
It would work, however, if, say, the file was named "foo*bar?", where
shell metacharacter substitutions stand the possibility of generating
something unexpected without the quotes (and where `rm foo*bar?` and
`rm "foo*bar?"` might yield different results).
rm -rf ./-help
rm -rf -- -help
will work in this example.
--
Ryan "Cheshire" Younce / ryan@manunkind.org / http://www.manunkind.org/~ryan/
"As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you
know its true name." -- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie
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