How can I expand both a variable name and a wildcard in a file name?

Question

I have a bash script where $DIR is a directory name that may contain spaces.

This:

rm "$DIR/*.MOV"

gives the error "No such file or directory". There is no file literally named "*.MOV"; I want the * to expand into multiple arguments - one per matching filename.

Eg:

rm some\ folder/foo.MOV some\ folder/bar.MOV

How can I do this?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '16 at 11:40

11

Quoting prevents globbing. Try this with GNU bash:

rm "$DIR"/*.MOV

answered Mar 19 '16 at 11:40

Cyrus

5,751

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 19 '16 at 11:42

-1

A workaround:

for FILE in `ls "$DIR" | grep .MOV`; do
  rm "$DIR/$FILE"
done

answered Mar 19 '16 at 11:42

Nathan Long

27,435

How can I expand both a variable name and a wildcard in a file name?

2 Answers2