Linux · Bash: Variables, Expansion & Globbing

Someone runs ls * in a directory with only a handful of entries and gets a huge listing — why, and which option fixes it?

Answer locked. Get the free KnowCard app to reveal it — plus spaced-repetition review so it actually sticks.

This is one card from the KnowCard library — thousands more across SAP, Linux, Python and more. In the app you get the answer, AI explanations, and cards that come back right before you would forget them. Free to start on iOS, Android or the web.

More in Bash: Variables, Expansion & Globbing

Before running a destructive command like rm on a glob, how can you preview exactly which files the pattern will hit?

By default echo * omits hidden files — how do you make globbing include dotfiles, and how do you turn it back off?

Why does find ... | ls -l show the current directory instead of find's results, and what two mechanisms actually pass find's output to ls?

When feeding a very large list of files to a command, why can xargs succeed where $(command) substitution fails?

Piping filenames through find | xargs breaks when a filename contains a space — what pair of options makes it robust?

A beginner writes var = abc to set a variable and it fails — what is the exact syntax rule being violated?

Start learning today

Free to start — download the app or use it in your browser.