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Dealing with Odd Filenames on the Commandline

Jul 07, 2009  By Shawn Powers
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Command lineish

JackAcid's picture
Submitted by JackAcid (not verified) on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 11:36.

Coud just use good old mc...

How to remove files that start with a dash

Troy Roberts's picture
Submitted by Troy Roberts (not verified) on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 15:02.

The simplest solution to removing a file beginning with a dash is to append ./ to the file name. So, to remove a file named "-" use: rm ./-

Removing filenames that start with a dash

Gumnos's picture
Submitted by Gumnos (not verified) on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 04:10.

This does work, but bash's wild-card expansion doesn't do this, so you can get caught by

rm *

where one of the filenames happens to be "-rf".

-gumnos

Bane of filenames -- beginning with a dash

Gumnos's picture
Submitted by Gumnos (not verified) on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 12:17.

The bane of my filename experiences are filenames that begin with a dash. They choke all sorts of command-line processing. Though many programs allow you to use a double-dash to separate command-line switches from filenames, not all programs support this convention. Little is as cruel as creating a file named "-rf /" and watching somebody try to remove that file...

Dashes suck...

Dan Fekete's picture
Submitted by Dan Fekete (not verified) on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 13:32.

Although I haven't dealt with it for a while, how does one deal with starting dashes? Would anyone be so kind as to post a script to find and change them to, say, an underscore?

In my previous experience I would have to change the name in gnome. But on servers with no X, this is a bit difficult.

- files

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 21:28.

Dan I feel your pain. Does this provide relief: cd ..; rm subdir/-*; cd -