Running Safari from the command line adds current directory to the URL

I am trying to run the Safari browser (on Mac OS 10.4) from the command line, as follows:

/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari http://localhost/dev/myfile.html

However, Safari starts up and tries to access

file:///Users/charlesanderson/scripts/http://localhost/dev/myfile.html

/Users/charlesanderson/scripts happens to be my current directory.

Can someone explain why Safari does this? Firefox is much better behaved.

Starting Safari with arguments isn't supported or documented, AFAIK.

It's interpreting the first argument as a path (you'll notice that if you begin it with a /, it doesn't prepend the working directory).

If you just want Safari to navigate to a URL, use open:

open -a Safari <url>

How about

open -a Safari URL