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just want to share an interesting or rather accidentally discovered bug for Unix 'rm' command. I have accidentally created the file named '--help'. However, when I try to delete using rm command, it does not work and it shows up the help menu for rm instead. Same to mv command, I want to rename it to a valid filename, it shows the help menu of mv.

[Answer] To delete the file named '--help', try to use 'find' command.

Thanks for your reading and I hope it somewhat helps.

CheeHow
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2 Answers2

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Try rm -- --help, this will do the trick:

$ rm -fv -- --help
removed ‘--help’
Mugurel
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You can delete the file by quoting the filename or by preceding special characters with a back-slash.

Both of these work. 

rm './--help' 

rm ./\--help
ewatt
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