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From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Ugly file name
Keywords: rm cat mv regexp
Message-ID: <1632@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 16 May 89 17:57:05 GMT
References: <128@tdl.UUCP> <7170@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <1614@auspex.auspex.com> <448@hsi86.hsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 20

>This doesn't work for filenames that start with a minus. eg -badfile
>Anyone know how to erase such files with whipping up a short C program?

Yes, I think just about *anybody* reading any of these groups who is
familiar with the "unlink" system call can do it trivially.

However, there are better ways to remove "-badfile" as well.  Both the
BSD and S5 versions (S5R3 and later, and least, and, I suspect, S5R2 and
maybe earlier as well) have flags to say "nothing after this is a flag,
even if it begins with a "-"; in the BSD version, the flag is "-", and
in the S5 version, the flag is "--" (since the S5R3 version, and
possibly other versions, use "getopt", which handles "--" for the
program using it).  So, you can do

	bsd$ rm - -badfile
	s5$ rm -- -badfile

If your "rm" doesn't have something like that, you can do

	loser% rm ./-badfile