bug#17372: GNU mv

[Eric Blake]

tag 17372 notabug
thanks

On 04/29/2014 08:34 AM, Scott Brunner wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Not sure I'm in the right place - but - I'm having a problem with the "mv" 
> command in Cygwin's Unix emmulator...

Yes, this is the right place; you'd see the same behavior on Linux,
which means it is not cygwin-specific (if you do encounter something
that you cannot reproduce on Linux, then the cygwin lists are a better
place for that question).

> The man page directed me to this address... I have a bunch of files that all 
> start with the "-" character (-moo, -moo1, -moo2)... Obviously the "-" is 
> treated as a switch in the Unix world - so you can't do simple moves as you 
> would in Solaris... I'm not sure if the goal of your GNU release is supposed 
> to match the functionality of Unix but I just wanted to point this out in 
> case you were unaware...
> 
> In Solaris - this works: 
>  
>     mv -f - '-moo' SCO-moo

That behavior is not required by POSIX.  But what POSIX _does_ require
is that:

mv -f -- -moo SCO-moo

does the right thing, and GNU mv complies with that.  You can also use:

mv -f ./-moo SCO-moo


You have asked a FAQ; for more details:

https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#I-have-a-file-called-_002d_002dhelp_002e-How-do-I-remove-it_003f

Therefore, I'm closing this as not a bug, although you can continue to
respond to the thread if you have more questions on the topic.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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