On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 3:01 AM Nicolas George <[email protected]> wrote: > Jeffrey Walton (HE12025-10-31): > > $ ls ./*.pdf > > ./--K.pdf > ^^ > That is a useless “./”.
That ./ prefix isn't at all useless, notably if one doesn't want any of the arguments to be interpreted as options (leading -) and if one's command doesn't have/support the -- option (to indicate end of options), or one doesn't want to use that. However, yes, in that case, e.g. output of ls, the resultant ls output will then have that ./ prefix on it's listing (unless perhaps, e.g., the only match is to exactly one file and one didn't include the -d option). So, sure, context matters - what one is trying to do and wants to achieve, and with what. So, e.g., say one has an implementation of the rm command that doesn't support -- at all. And let's say one has a file named exactly this that one wants to remove: -rf * Yes, starting with -, with those option letters r, and f, a space, and literal * character. So, yeah, something like: rm -rf * almost certainly not what one wants, however, highly useful, e.g.: rm './-rf *'
