How to create a file with a "#" character in the name in Unix?
Solution 1:
The two canonical ways to create/delete files with "funny characters" are
- Quoting, like alex showed. You may use single or double quotes, depending on your expansion needs. A backslash can be used to escape a single funny charater. This works as long as the file name does not look like an option (starts with a dash).
- If the file looks like an option, prepend a path:
rm ./- "./-rf ."
Modern versions of Unix utilities often support the double dash to indicate the end of options. On such systems, rm -- - removes a file named -.
Note that you cannot create or remove files with a slash or ASCII NUL in their name. If you have such a file (I've seen them), something in your file system has gone terribly wrong.
In your particular case with the hash #, the problem stems from the shell interpreting a word starting with # as starting a shell comment. A good shell lets you disable this shell feature, called interactive comments:
- zsh:
unsetopt interactivecomments - bash:
shopt -u interactive_comments
With these you can simply touch #; rm # without hassle.
Solution 2:
To make...
touch "#file"
To delete...
rm "#file"