*BSD News Article 42799


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From: harverso@beastie.cs.und.ac.za (Tony Harverson )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Removing a file with a leading "-" in the name
Date: 23 Feb 1995 18:26:05 GMT
Organization: University of Natal (Durban), South Africa
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Message-ID: <3iijvt$f2r@owl.und.ac.za>
References: <1995Feb20.023938.20960@rai.juice.or.jp> <3ii3lt$m9b@crl3.crl.com>
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Ron Wickersham (rjw@crl.com) wrote:
: Tetsuji Rai (tetsuji@rai.juice.or.jp) wrote:

: :  The title says it all.   I wonder how to remove a file with "-" in the
: : begining of file name (such as "-foo").   You must not program for that.
: : Simply use unix commands.   I just made a file "-.rej" by mistake, and
: : wondering how to erase it without programming.  Somehow rm recognizes
: : "-" character as an option.

An interesting version of this question I got out of a set of notes on a SCO
course was this....

use ls -i to find the inum of the file.
find /path/ -inum <number> -exec rm {} \; 
It seems to work on most - anyone know of a case when it won't ?

chus

Tony
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