filenames with "-" and ":"

[Jens Alfke]

I haven't actually run into this, but there can be problems using 'hg'  
subcommands on files with certain types of names.

* A filename starting with "-" will be interpreted as a command-line  
flag.

* A filename with a ":" in it may be misinterpreted as a pattern (as  
per 7.4 of the red-bean book). For example, if there were a file  
called "glob:foo", naming it on an hg command line would cause the  
command to actually apply to a file "foo".

A workaround is to put "./" before the filename, resulting in an  
equivalent path that doesn't have a prefix that triggers these special  
interpretations.

Granted, these aren't the kinds of filenames you'd be likely to see in  
source code; but revision control does get used for other types of  
projects. (As an example, a directory of archived email might contain  
a lot of files with names starting "re:".) And as I'm working on a GUI  
front-end to Mercurial, which generates 'hg' commands, I realized I  
had to pay attention to such edge cases. I'm posting this here because  
I know other people are working on similar utilities.

It might also be worth pointing this out in the manual. Or even adding  
a special command-line flag like a plain '-' that disables special  
interpretation of all following arguments.

--Jens