19

I have this shell command:

kill `cat -- $PIDFILE`

What the double -- does here? Why not use just

kill `cat $PIDFILE`

2 Answers 2

26

The -- tells cat not to try to parse what comes after it as command line options.

As an example, think of what would happen in the two cases if the variable $PIDFILE was defined as PIDFILE="--version". On my machine, they give the following results:

$ cat $PIDFILE
cat (GNU coreutils) 6.10
Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard M. Stallman.

$ cat -- $PIDFILE
cat: --version: No such file or directory
3
  • 3
    It is worth noting that this behavior (while very common) is defined by the receiving program (i.e. cat) and not by the shell. Feb 21, 2010 at 2:33
  • Is there any documentation or tutorial on writing your own shell script that understands that -- means the end of command line options? I've seen ones with getopts and other techniques, but nothing discussing --. Aug 25, 2015 at 8:08
  • 3
    @CMCDragonkai You need not look any further than the getopt(1) man page: "Each parameter after a '--' parameter is always interpreted as a non-option parameter". Aug 25, 2015 at 10:29
1

POSIX.1-2017

POSIX also specifies it at: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap12.html#tag_12_02

12.2 Utility Syntax Guidelines

Guideline 10:

The first -- argument that is not an option-argument should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character.

See also: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11376/what-does-double-dash-mean-also-known-as-bare-double-dash

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