How can I get Git to delete a file whose name begins with hyphens?

Question

I have added and committed a file ----MY_Session.php. I left hyphens in the beginning by mistake. Now I want to delete this file, but when I try to run

git rm -----MY_Session.php

it throws the following error.

error: unknown option `---MY_Session.php'
usage: git rm [options] [--] <file>...

-n, --dry-run         dry run
-q, --quiet           do not list removed files
--cached              only remove from the index
-f, --force           override the up-to-date check
-r                    allow recursive removal
--ignore-unmatch      exit with a zero status even if nothing matched

I tried all the options listed above but none of them worked.

How can I delete this file?

Try using the `--` symbol. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5711356/delete-a-branch-starting-with-a-hyphen — saricden, Mar 22 '15 at 09:13

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 22 '15 at 09:15

3

Try

git rm -- ----MY_Session.php

The '--' should stop the parsing of command line options and consider ----MY_Session.php as the filename.

answered Mar 22 '15 at 09:15

NDY

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Or use `./----MY_Session.php` – John Szakmeister Mar 22 '15 at 09:29

Tim Biegeleisen · Answer 2 · 2015-03-22T09:52:47.097

1

You can use a glob pattern in your git rm call to remove your file without specifying the dashes:

git rm '*MY_Session.php'

Of course, you would want to make sure that this pattern won't match any other files besides ----MY_Session.php.

edited Mar 22 '15 at 09:52

answered Mar 22 '15 at 09:29

Tim Biegeleisen

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*Of course, you would want to make sure that this pattern won't match any other files besides `----MY_Session.php`.* For more robustness, you could use `?` instead of `*`, as in `git rm '?---MY_Session.php'`. – jub0bs Mar 22 '15 at 09:59

How can I get Git to delete a file whose name begins with hyphens?

2 Answers2