UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

one of my co-workers went into my home directory and made the following entry:

-You-idiot

So, now I've been trying to delete it and I can't seem to do it. I've tried to do the following:

rm -f \-\you\-\idiot

but that doesn't work. I've tried it as root as well and it still doesn't work.

Any suggestions (other than beat up my co-worker)?

VJ

Interestingly, you can use this to your advantage... but more on that later. First off, try:
cd /his/directory
rm ./-You-idiot


Now, how it can help you:
cd $HOME
echo "Don't rm -r this directory" > ./-i
chmod 000 ./-i

now, if you execute "rm -r *" in that directory, the shell will substitute everything (in alphabetical order) in place of the *, so it'll interpret -i as the "interactive" flag... a little bit of safety.
TEST THIS IN A SAFE DIRECTORY FIRST! DON'T TRY THIS IN YOUR HOME DIRECTORY, JUST IN CASE!

Thanks. That did the trick.

VJ

Fully qualifying the filename, as LivinFree showed, is a good solution. Another handy trick to keep in mind is that "--" will terminate option processing for a command:

ls -l -- -You-idiot
rm -- -You-idiot