On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, David A. Gatwood wrote:

> > [-- Removing a file called '-axl' --]
>
> Yeah.  In fact, rm \"-axl\" should work, too (quotes to indicate that it's
> not a flag, backslashes to keep the shell from removing the quotes when
> turning it into an argument.  That might be shell-dependent, tho.
> Alternatively, ls *axl and if it's the only one, rm *axl.
> 
	Neither option will work - the first will try to remove a file
	with a " as the first and last character, the latter is identical
	to typing 'rm -axl', which is what started this thread.

	All shells should expand any metacharacters (eg: '*' or '?'),
	handle any quoting ('\' or enclosing in quotes), then pass the
	resultant arguments to the command.

		David/abs

   _.oXo._   Too complex to explain, too simplistic to admit.   _.oXo._