John Summerfield wrote: > Often, too, you can use the TAB key to advance over problematic characters, a "?" to > represent one of them and "*" to represent any number of them. So > > rm ?rtsp-stream-over-tcp > rm *over-tcp
Sometimes, but in this case it wouldn't work. Using a * or ? will help with characters that the shell wants to mess with, but - generally has no special meaning to the shell. [1] So "rm *over-tcp" will be globbed by the shell and passed to rm as "rm -rtsp-stream-over-tcp". This doesn't help because the first - is interpreted by rm itself as an indication that the argument is a flag instead of a file. Some people take advantage of this behavior by creating a file called "-i" in important directories, so "rm *" will turn into "rm -i ..." causing rm to ask for confirmation before deleting. [1] Yes, I'm aware of "cd -" and there are probably other special cases. regards, -- Kevin B. McCarty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Physics Department WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University GPG public key ID: 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
