[rwmj]

Because that's how MS-DOS used to work, and it was dumb. It means every program has to do globbing (or often, didn't do globbing). In any case, bash does get this right: ls * will pass the correct filenames to the ls program no matter what the filenames contain. Also quotes around variable expansions can cope with any characters.

[haberman]

> It means every program has to do globbing

So what? If the primary API used by command-line applications to open files does the globbing, then programs will have to go out of their way to not glob. And you'll get the added benefit that globs will only be applied to arguments that are actually meant to specify filenames. There would be none of this escaping "*" when you pass it to "find."

> In any case, bash does get this right: ls will pass the correct filenames to the ls program no matter what the filenames contain.

That doesn't solve the problem; your filename could be called "--help."

[prakashk]

> your filename could be called "--help."

bash isn't interpreting '--help' at all, it is just passed on to the program being executed, and most GNU CLI programs conventionally interpret '--help' as a special option.

If your filename is indeed --help, the convention is to use '--' as the separator between your command line options and filenames. Anything after -- is not interpreted as a command-line option.

Another way would be to use a more qualified filename form ('./--help')