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  • There's another usability issue: nullglob appears to break tab-completion (pressing the tab key does nothing when it's enabled). Commented Jul 5, 2016 at 16:01
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    It's possible to use nullglob on a per glob basis with bash - although the syntax is not as elegant as zsh files=$(shopt -s nullglob;echo *.txt) Commented Sep 21, 2017 at 21:33
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    @JonNalley, that stores the concatenation (with space) of the file names (with possible transformation with xpg_echo) into a scalar variables. You'd need something like readarray -td '' files < <(shopt -s nullglob; printf '%s\0' *.txt) with bash 4.4 or above or (shopt -s nullglob; printf '%s\0' *.txt) | xargs -r0 cmd with GNU xargs for that to be usable at all with arbitrary file names. Or, still with bash4.4, use a helper function that uses local - (copied from ash 25 years later) for a local scope for options. Commented Sep 22, 2017 at 7:31
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    @midnite I do explain that set -o nullglob; ls -- *.txt lists the current working directory instead of txt files or grep foo ./*.txt greps stdin instead of txt files which is worse than letting ls/grep complain about those non-existent files. Commented Jan 10, 2024 at 9:48
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    Regarding the comment above, "use a helper function that uses local - for a local scope for options": unfortunately, this only works for the options that Bash sets with set, not the ones that can only be controlled using shopt. Commented Mar 27 at 16:52