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

Tue Jan 22 16:53:46 UTC 2008
Greg Bailey <gbailey at lxpro.com>

Benjamin Franz wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Eric B. 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?
>
> rm ./-N=2007-11-08 ./--newer=2007-11-08
>

Or, from the "rm" man page:

To remove a file whose name starts with a ‘-’, for example ‘-foo’, use 
one of these com-
mands:

rm -- -foo

rm ./-foo