Can't download video by ID if starts with hyphen

[dhjw]

Can't seem to download a video by ID if it starts with a hyphen, e.g.

youtube-dl -1WR2z4MK8Q
youtube-dl -e -1WR2z4MK8Q
youtube-dl -o "filename" -i --write-description "-1WR2z4MK8Q"

I've tried both types of quotes, escaping the hyphen, etc., to no avail.

On Ubuntu linux.

[dhjw]

Ah, I can use the full URL.

[phihag]

Like virtually all command-line programs, dashes are for options (unquoted or not, that only makes to shell parsing, youtube-dl gets the same inputs either way). Use the convention of -- to mark an end of options, like

youtube-dl -- -1WR2z4MK8Q

or (as you have discovered yourself) prepend the URL with youtu.be/. Thank you for reporting this, I hope this issue report provides a good guidance for anyone else struggling with this problem.