Re: unix file names

From: Bruce D. Ray <bray_at_iupui.edu>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:02:42 -0500

>Here is a question for all of the UNIX gurus out there. I have a user who
>named his fid files with a leading dash (i.e. -). Naturally these files
>are not recognized by VNMR and therefore will not load for processing.
>Also, they cannot be renamed or copied by UNIX with mv or cp because the
>dash is interpreted to mean a UNIX option follows. Therefore it reports >an error.
>
>Is there a way to recover these files?

This problem is quite similar to the problem caused by
some forms of system cracking kits that produce file
names that include non-printing characters. If the
names are in quotation marks, then Unix commands should
recognize them as names despite the problem of the
leading dash. Thus writing the name as "-name.fid"
should allow mv and cp to function correctly. A backslash
is supposed to act as an escape for single special
characters as well. Thus, writing the name as \-name.fid
ought to work equally well.
Received on Sun Jul 21 2002 - 10:05:25 MST

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