Question

Somehow, at some point, I accidentally created a file in my home directory named ‘-s’. It is about 500 kb and I have no idea if it contains important data or not. I cannot figure out any way to do anything with this file, because every command I use to try to view, copy, or move it interprets the filename as an argument.

I’ve tried putting it in quotes, escaping it with a backslash, a combination of the two, nothing seems to work.

Also, when I first posed this question to my coworkers, we puzzled over it for a while until someone finally overheard and asked “why don’t you just rename it?” After I explained to him that cp and mv both think the filename is an argument so it doesn’t work, he said “no, not from the command line, do it from Gnome.” I sheepishly followed his advice, and it worked. HOWEVER I’m still interested in how you would solve this dilemma if you didn’t have a window manager and the command line was the only option.

Answer 1

You can refer to it either using ./-filename or some command will allow you to put it after double dash:

rm -- -filename