What does "--" (double-dash) mean?

More precisely, a double dash (--) is used in most Bash built-in commands and many other commands to signify the end of command options, after which only positional arguments are accepted.

Example use: Let's say you want to grep a file for the string -v - normally -v will be considered the option to reverse the matching meaning (only show lines that do not match), but with -- you can grep for the string -v like this:

grep -- -v file

3 years ago