Hello Axel, On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 09:16:14AM +0200, Axel Spallek wrote: > the following throw errors: > > dirname --to-0040257282759-in.wav > dirname "--to-0040257282759-in.wav" > dirname '--to-0040257282759-in.wav' > > IMHO at least the last two ones schould work.
If the arguments to a program start with a - or --, they are assumed to be options. You can use -- to stop option processing: $ dirname -- --to-0040257282759-in.wav . Quoting the arguments as in your last two examples does not affect this, as the shell does not interpret leading - characters in the command line, the program called does. HTH, Erik
