• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Ubuntu,  Unix

    Working With Files Whose Name Starts with a “-“

    Recently I needed to create a bunch of files that had names starting with a dash. If you simply run touch followed by the filename, if the filename starts with a dash, it will throw an error that there’s an illegal option. Therefore, you must escape out the dash by passing a double dash in front of it. For example, to create a file with a dash in the name, use the following syntax: touch -- -man Likewise, to remove that file: rm -- -man You can also use the double dash when passing commands to ssh rather than have ssh interpret them as arguments, making it useful for command…