[CentOS] How to delete files with specical characters in the name?

[Brian Mathis]

On Jan 22, 2008 11:46 AM, Eric B. <ebenze at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got an odd situation here.  Somehow, I find myself with two files that
> start with the - character.
> [eric at apollo mysql]$ ls -l
> total 93348
> -rw-r--r--  1 mysql mysql  9273344 Nov 13 19:03 -N=2007-11-08
> -rw-r--r--  1 mysql mysql 38879232 Nov 13 19:02 --newer=2007-11-08
>
>
> Don't ask how they were created; something went wrong with a script at some
> point.
>
> My problem is that I am trying to delete them, but can't figure out how to
> delete these files.  Everything I try, I get the same msg:
> [eric at apollo mysql]$ rm '-N=2007-11-08'
> rm: invalid option -- N
> Try `rm --help' for more information.
>
>
> I have tried single quotes, double quotes, escaping it with a \ and still
> get the same error.
>
> Any ideas / suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Eric


Try "rm -- filename"  That's two dashes, then a space.  That tells
'rm' not to process any more arguments and switches and treat them as
files.