At Thu, 30 Oct 2025 15:34:01 -0400 The Wanderer <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 2025-10-30 at 14:32, [email protected] wrote: > > > The Wanderer <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> On 2025-10-30 at 13:33, Michael wrote: > >> > >>> The command > >>> > >>> ls -- *.pdf > >>> > >>> has been run and a very large number of PDF files has been > >>> listed. > >>> > >>> It is very difficult to spot any strangely named PDF files. > >>> > >>> What command should be issued to easily list any strangely named > >>> PDF file ? > >> > >> Try: > >> > >> $ ls -- *.pdf | grep ' -' > >> > >> This should show you any files whose name include a space followed > >> by a dash. The space would be treated as a token separator, and the > >> dash would be treated as the beginning of a new argument to ls. > > > > err no, ls lists multiple files on a line and this wouldn't pick up > > any file at the start of a line. > > In addition to the notes Nicolas George made, I'll point out that the > issue is almost certainly not about the characters at the *start* of a > filename, but about a filename with a space *in* it and a dash *after > that space*. Actually no. The shell is not actually that stupid -- what you suggest would only happen if the OP did a copy-paste or just typed the file names with spaces and did not escape or quote then. The OP is using a wildcard (*.pdf). When the shell expands that it loads the *expansions* into separate elements of the argv array passed to the forked process. That process than looks at the elements and processes any with a '-' as the first character as options. > > The command I suggested was aimed primarily at catching files with such > a ' -' sequence in the middle of the name. > > I'll admit that it wouldn't catch filenames that start with a '-', or at > least I'm not confident that it would. I suppose something like > > # ls -- *.pdf | grep '(^| )-' > > would catch both cases. > -- Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services [email protected] -- Webhosting Services
