The asterisk * is a glob. Since double-quotes allow variables inside to be dereferenced rather than always quoting everything literally, presumably he was expe

The asterisk * is a glob. Since double-quotes allow variables inside to be dereferenced rather than always quoting everything literally, presumably he was expecting that double-quotes might still allow globs to work rather than causing them to be quoted, when in fact all quotes will quote globs whether single or double. So he was expecting it might print out "a".