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From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Unix problem
Message-ID: <1991Apr25.044544.27029@alembic.acs.com>
Date: 25 Apr 91 04:45:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: alembic.1991Apr25.044544.27029
References: <14425@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <6238@beryl12.UUCP>
Organization: Alembic Computer Services, McLean VA
Lines: 27

In article <6238@beryl12.UUCP> mostek@motcid.UUCP (Frank B. Mostek) writes:
>wangjw@cs.purdue.EDU (Jingwen Wang) writes:
>
>>  I was using the X-window and somehow generated some garbage files. I
>>cannot remove some files because these files are named "-C", "-f" etc.
>>Can someone tell me how to remove these garbages? 
>
>Use the find command:
>                                                    
>find . -name "-C" -exec rm -f {} \;

Many versions of rm(1) support the "-" flag, as in

	"rm - -C"

which tells rm that the next argument is not an option even if it
starts with a dash. Check your local man page.

>I am not sure why this works and
>rm -f "-C" does not work.

Because the shell removes the quotes before execing rm. It
works in find because find interprets the argument after
-name as a filename even if it begins with a "-".

-- 
Dave Mack