ls invalid option '2'

Question

I have the following files (among others) in a directory. I’m running Ubuntu 16.04.

 484 May  8 21:50 NA19239.vcf
 484 May  9 08:50 HG01583.vcf
 484 May  9 08:51 HG01595.vcf
   0 May  9 15:11 HG00268-WGS-cordSorted.bam.vcf
   0 May  9 15:11 HG00096-WGS-cordSorted.bam.vcf
   0 May  9 15:11 HG00419-WGS-cordSorted.bam.vcf

if I try

ls *.vcf

I get

ls: invalid option -- '2'
Try 'ls --help' for more information.

I do not get the error for other file extensions in the directory. I do not get the error for .vcf files when I run the command in other directories. What is causing this error? I have not tried anything except searching for this error. Thanks.

Solution

You probably have some badly-named file in your folder which expands into -2...vcf or something similar. You can run ls in this form: ls -- *.vcf to get around it.

Explanation:

BASH performs wildcard expansion before running ls so there is probably something like ls -2...vcf blabla01.vcf blabla02.vcf being invoked. By adding two dashes you tell the ls where the parameters end so it treats the -2...vcf as a filename argument.

Comments

[Felipe]

Is there a way to use the -- and also output as a single column with -1? because it seems that I can't use both together

[Fiisch]

You are probably just adding -1 to the end of the command. That will not work because -1 is an option. the -- basically says "no more options after this point". Move the option to the beginning of the command and it should be fine: ls -1 -- *xml.