Delete a file starting with a dash/hypen on Linux on the command lineDelete a file starting with a dash/hypen on Linux on the command line

Posted July 6th, 2008 in Linux/Unix/BSD

So you have a file that starts with a dash/hyphen/- and need to delete it. But when you try to do so, the "rm" command complains that you have passed an "invalid option --". This post looks at the simple solution to deleting a file that starts with a dash/hyphen.

As an example, doing a directory listing gives you something like this:

$ ls -l
total 678586
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        54 Apr 29 15:39 -.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     26819 Apr 30 13:17 210.5.53.35.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     18114 Apr 30 01:37 210.5.53.36.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     18410 Apr 30 01:37 210.5.53.37.log
...

You try to delete the -.log file like this:

rm -.log

and rm complains like this:

rm: invalid option -- .
Try `rm ./-.log' to remove the file `-.log'.
Try `rm --help' for more information.

The answer is actually supplied in the error message, which is fairly unusual for a Linux/Unix command. Instead of doing rm -.log you simply add ./ to the start and run this instead:

rm ./-.log

This will also work for other command line utilities you need to run against a file starting with a hypen/dash.