Wildcards and variables in “risky” commands are a way of favoring convenience over safety and auditability, favoring writing (done rarely) over reading (more fr

Wildcards and variables in “risky” commands are a way of favoring convenience over safety and auditability, favoring writing (done rarely) over reading (more frequent). They are also unlikely to stand the test of time because the meaning can change, casting a different net than you originally intended. If a command is risky, you should at least GENERATE the variable-expanded list of inputs (e.g. in a separate file) so that the list can be audited. For instance, basic automatic sanity checks can be performed on the expansion like “length > 1”, and you can see every affected item. It also acts as a log of impacted things in case it does run. Robust code is not always convenient.