Hi all!

There is this machine on our network (that I browse with Samba) that has some directoy names names like:
-= Some Dir =-
I can browse thiese with a GUI browser. I can however not figure out how to get into them with the command line.

cd -= Some Dir =-
does not work. You get this in return:
bash: cd: -=: invalid option
cd: usage: cd [-L|-P] [dir]

cd "-= Some Dir =-" or cd '-= Some Dir =-' do not not work either. You get the same error message.

Does anyone have any idea?
Googeling this is a bit problematic, so that's why I decided to ask here.

Thanx in advance!

Insert a "--" flag before the folder name. 'cd -- "-somedir-"' The "--" tells the command that there are no more options and everything follows it is an argument (usually a file or folder name).

And remember, when you have "illegal" characters in a filename (including spaces), they need to be be escaped by either enclosing the whole name in quotes or by placing a backslash in front of the illegal character.

Of course, the best thing is simply to not use illegal characters in pathnames in the first place.

Ahhh thanx.
cd -- "-= Some Dir =-"
does the job.

The machine those dirs are on is not under my control and yes the person who came up with the bright idea to use names like that deserves spanking >:|