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I don't know why someone would make a directory with a leading hyphen, e.g. named "-1". When I try to change to that directory, it says invalid option.

I tried putting "-1" in quotes but that didn't help either. Can anyone tell me how to access these types of dirs?

$ ls -l
total 3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Dec  7 18:51 lastFailedBuild -> -1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Dec  7 18:51 lastUnstableBuild -> -1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Dec  7 18:51 lastUnsuccessfulBuild -> -1
$ cd -1
-bash: cd: -1: invalid option
cd: usage: cd [-L|[-P [-e]] [-@]] [dir]
$
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  • 2
    Looks like this directory doesn't even exist. Commented Jan 26, 2023 at 22:26
  • 1
    For many GNU utilities you could use -- to delimit options and arguments, i.e. cd -- -1 could have worked if it had existed. Commented Jan 26, 2023 at 22:28

1 Answer 1

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You can anchor the name -1 in the current directory by prefixing it with ./. Then, then resulting name ./-1 does not start with a dash and cd will not try to interpret it as an option.

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