Ok. I understand it is not possible to make “-V “ instead of “-Vfilename” because so many existing scripts rely on thatgrept works a certain way.
Maybe what is possible is to add a line to manual that explains that certain filenames that are OK in modern OS might not work with grep. I have used “-" sometimes to keep certain file at the top of directory hierarchy. In this case I was organizing libraries and marked those that I was not using with “-“. Here is command-line example that you asked. Even looked from the manual the simple example and did not see what I was doing wrong (I did not read the whole manual.) So if the program user interface cannot be changed maybe the manual could tell that filenames that start with “-“ might require some additional quoting.... Marja ********* No need to reply ********* On Feb 26, 2022, at 1:33 PM, Marja Koivunen <ma...@innomore.com> wrote: I had a directory with filenames that started with “-“ doing grep on that directory for a “string" did not find anything although “string was on some of the files” grep just kept repeating something … FreeBSD Finally, (with some help) I understood that grep interpreted “-Vfiename” as an option -V and gave the version info instead of doing grep “string” * Maybe there is a way to add space after “-V “ and possibly also other options that could be used as part of a filename in some operating systems?
