Unable to remove a file which has a name like a command argument

Question

I inadvertently created a file called -r in my home directory. Now I cannot get rid of it:

rm -rf
rm: missing operand
Try 'rm --help' for more information.

Other attempts:

rm /-/r
rm: cannot remove ‘/-/r’: No such file or directory

Another one:

rm \-r
rm: missing operand
Try 'rm --help' for more information.

Is there a way to remove this file without deleting the whole directory?

Just FYI: Your second try using the forward slashes would delete a file named `r` from a directory named `-` in the root directory. — Dubu, Jun 12 '14 at 09:36
From `man rm`: To remove a file whose name starts with a -, 'for example -foo', use one of these commands: `rm -- -foo` or `rm ./-foo` — Parto, Jun 12 '14 at 10:37
Related: [Removing folder named ~](http://askubuntu.com/questions/26466/removing-folder-named), [Unable to “rm” a file named “() - .” due to “No such file or directory”](http://askubuntu.com/questions/225055/unable-to-rm-a-file-named-due-to-no-such-file-or-directory), [rm file '??q:q '](http://askubuntu.com/questions/389138/rm-file-qq) — Ilmari Karonen, Jun 14 '14 at 09:58
For future reference: [This question](http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/147377/49168) has answers for all the different possibilities to remove files. There are quite a few... — jmiserez, Aug 05 '14 at 14:47

terdon · Answer 1 · 2014-06-13T08:25:26.240

There are many ways of doing this:

Use the -- which signifies the end of option flags and the beginning of the list of arguments for many programs (including rm).
```
rm -- -r
```
Use the full path
```
rm /home/you/directory/-r
```
or, from the same directory (your current directory is referred to as .):
```
rm ./-r
```

Use find

find . -name "-r" -exec rm {} \;

or, to get all such files

find . -name "-*" -exec rm {} \;

Use an ugly hack. Move everything to a different directory (this will fail for the -r file for the same reason as rm does) and then delete the original directory (which will remove the file) and move everything back again. So, assuming your -r file is in ~/foo:
```
$ mkdir ~/bar
$ for f in *; do mv "$f" ../bar/; done
mv: invalid option -- 'r'
Try 'mv --help' for more information.
$ rm -rf ~/foo
$ mkdir ~/foo && cd ~/foo
$ mv ~/bar/* .
$ rmdir ~/bar
```

For the third option, `find . -name "-r" -delete` is even shorter. You may also want to use `-maxdepth 1` if you only want to delete the offending file in the current directory, but not recursively in all sub-directories. — Malte Skoruppa, Sep 17 '15 at 22:46
@MalteSkoruppa true, I tend to avoid GNU-only options but there's no reason to on this site. — terdon, Sep 18 '15 at 11:33

score 26 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 12 '14 at 08:49

In this case you have to use the double-dash (--) in your command arguments.

The purpose of it is to tell to the command that what's follow has not to be taken as an argument to the command but a simple input. In the case of rm, a file or directory name.

So type rm -- -r and you should get rid of this file.

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '14 at 09:34

9

You can also delete such files (starting with a '-') with this command:

rm ./-r

See the rm man page:

To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example '-foo', use one of these commands:
rm -- -foo

rm ./-foo

edited Jun 12 '14 at 09:34

terdon

98,183
15
197
293

answered Jun 12 '14 at 08:59

Sylvain Pineau

61,564
18
149
183

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 12 '14 at 09:05

2

Or you could specify the full path of the directory in the rm command,

Example:

rm -rf ~/Desktop/-r

answered Jun 12 '14 at 09:05

Avinash Raj

77,204
56
214
254

Unable to remove a file which has a name like a command argument

4 Answers4

Linked

Related