Remove a folder with the same name as an environment variable

Question

I was messing around with a log4j properties file and accidently made a folder with the following text ${foo} however I also have an environment variable named foo that points to a folder so thus if I do rm -rf "${foo}" it removes the folder $foo is pointing to, instead of the folder ${foo}. How can I specify to delete the folder in my current directory using a relative path instead of deleting the folder the environment variable points to?

Here is the layout to better help understand

$foo = /home/user/bar

${foo} = /home/user/${foo}

Answer 1

String interpolation causes this. There are a number of ways to selectively prevent this from happening. The bash hackers wiki has some good examples, though the specifics may vary if you're not actually using bash.

In short, you can prevent interpolation with single quotes, or you can escape the characters.

[me:~/work]$ export foo=bar
[me:~/work]$ echo $foo
bar
[me:~/work]$ echo "\${foo} is set to ${foo}"
${foo} is set to bar