Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!njsmu!mccc!jonlab!jon
From: jon@jonlab.UUCP (Jon H. LaBadie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att
Subject: Re: Problem removing a file
Summary: a simple way to fool rm
Message-ID: <627@jonlab.UUCP>
Date: 2 Feb 89 13:28:07 GMT
References: <695@flatline.UUCP> <350@arnold.UUCP>
Followup-To: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att
Organization: 4455 Province Line Rd., Princeton, NJ 08540
Lines: 20

In article <350@arnold.UUCP>, dave@arnold.UUCP (Dave Arnold) writes:
> erict@flatline.UUCP (The Evil Mel Fujitsu) writes:
> > 
> > I've created, in my home directory, a file by the name of:
> > -ef
> mv \-ef Xef
> rm Xef

A simple way to "trick" rm into removing "dash" files
is to not place the dash file name first.  Give a
false, dummy name, then the dash file name.

	rm xyzzy -ef

Rm will complain about xyzzy not being there, but will
accecpt -ef as a file name, not an option (options
comming before file names).
-- 
Jon LaBadie
{att, ulysses, princeton, bcr}!jonlab!jon