Hi guys,

So I've got a directory with quite a few thousand files (+27000) in it. They aren't named anything stupid; only numbers and _s.

I'm using the bash shell.

When I try and manipulate the files, starting with a *, I get an error:

ls *.gif
ls: invalid option -- _
Try `ls --help' for more information.

I can use the wildcard in the middle of my query, just not at the start.

Same thing happens for cp, mv etc

I can get round it by:
ls -- *.gif

However, my question is: why on earth does this happen? I first thought maybe there was a character limit for the expansion... but I didn't see how the -- would help me.

Obviously google isn't particularly helpful when searching for '--'

Anyone have any ideas?
Cheers
Scazz

Maybe there are files starting with an hyphen, so that the commands interpret these file names as options. The -- (double hyphen) in many linux commands serves to terminate the list of options, so that everything that follows is treated as a real argument (positional parameter). It is the right way to go, if you want to manage these files from the command line.

You're right! I checked for that by

ls | less
and
ls | tail -10

thinking that '-' would either be sorted before numbers or after numbers - it turns out ls ignores the leading '-' and sorts by the next character.

I thought I ruled that out!
Thanks for the explanation
Scazz