Ghost Track - Lvl 2: Name Game

In this level, Kael is trying to mess with you by naming files in a way that makes the shell act weird. If you try to cat a file that starts with a dash or has a space in it, the shell might think you're trying to pass an argument (like --help) instead of a filename.

Check the directory:

ls

You see a file called MANIFEST and another called 'file name'.

If you try to cat a file that starts with a dash (like if there was a file named -secret), the command would fail. To fix this, you can use the absolute path (like cat ./-secret) or the -- delimiter.

But here, the main obstacle is the space in file name. If you just type cat file name, Linux thinks you're trying to read two different files: one named file and one named name.

To handle spaces, you have two choices: 1. Quoting: cat "file name" 2. Escaping: cat file\ name

Result: REDACTED

TL;DR: When filenames have spaces or start with dashes, the shell gets confused. Use quotes or backslashes to tell the shell it's one single filename.