tags 15092 notabug close 15092 thanks On 08/14/2013 11:45 AM, Erik Auerswald wrote: > Hello Axel, > > On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 09:16:14AM +0200, Axel Spallek wrote: >> the following throw errors: >> >> dirname --to-0040257282759-in.wav >> dirname "--to-0040257282759-in.wav" >> dirname '--to-0040257282759-in.wav' >> >> IMHO at least the last two ones schould work. > > If the arguments to a program start with a - or --, they are assumed to be > options. You can use -- to stop option processing: > > $ dirname -- --to-0040257282759-in.wav > .
Another way would be to prefix it by a directory name, either fully qualified, or just the current directory: $ dirname "./--to-0040257282759-in.wav" or $ dirname "$(pwd)/--to-0040257282759-in.wav" > Quoting the arguments as in your last two examples does not affect this, as > the shell does not interpret leading - characters in the command line, the > program called does. Or told in another way: in your examples above, dirname(1) saw the same string as argument in all 3 cases. There's some help for this sort of misunderstanding in our FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#How-do-I-remove-files-that-start-with-a-dash_003f As this is not a bug in coreutils, I've marked it as such and closed the bug. Have a nice day, Berny
