> An aside on the topic of leading dashes in filenames: [...] This is an issue with traditional argument parsing, which is a very poor serialization format. I'

> An aside on the topic of leading dashes in filenames: [...] This is an issue with traditional argument parsing, which is a very poor serialization format. I'd say that the issue is that traditional argument parsing uses in-band signalling: a "filename" starting with a hyphen is treated as a control instruction instead of a filename (in some cases, unless a special "double hyphen" control instruction has been seen).