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    Somebody once made a bad choice that turned into "we've always done it this way". A very ubiquitous phenomenon (not only) in the software world. Commented May 21, 2015 at 12:27
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    The original reason is that the nullglob option didn't exist back then. So to maintain backwards compatibility it must be disabled by default. Commented May 21, 2015 at 12:48
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    While it does not specifically mention the null glob, some history on globbing is provided by this answer: unix.stackexchange.com/a/136409/22724 Commented May 21, 2015 at 13:10
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    I get the impression some think it should be obvious that nullglob should be enabled by default. I don't think it's obvious. That expansions happen in the shell before command invocation means that expanding to nothing is a less intuitive behavior than the glob remaining unchanged. Commented May 21, 2015 at 16:32
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    @kojiro Less intuitive to whom? Anyone with any familiarity with *NIX shells knows that * is a glob and expands to all existing files; how is it "intuitive" for there to be a special case where empty directory globs are "expanded" to a literal *? Commented Jul 5, 2016 at 15:53