On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 10:14:19PM -0500, Marshal Kar-Cheung Wong wrote:
> I was wondering how to remove a file by the name of --help.tgz?
> (Don't ask...Okay if you really must know, I typed in tgz --help and I
> get that file. There's no man page for tgz, and I think tgz shouldn't
> accept things starting with -- as file names...) rm always takes it
> as an option, even if quotes, double-quoted, backslashed,
> regular-expressioned. Any suggestions?
>
I don't think tgz is generally called directly. You probably want to use
'tar -czf mydir.tgz mydir/'. Anyway, from the rm manpage:
GNU rm, like every program that uses the getopt function
to parse its arguments, lets you use the -- option to
indicate that all following arguments are non-options. To
remove a file called `-f' in the current directory, you
could type either
rm -- -f
or
rm ./-f
The Unix rm program's use of a single `-' for this purpose
predates the development of the getopt standard syntax.
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| Eric G. Miller egm2@jps.net |
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