.* will be expanded by the shell to . .. and all local files beginning with . the BSD version of rm will never remove . or .. see: https://github.com/freebsd

.* will be expanded by the shell to . .. and all local files beginning with . the BSD version of rm will never remove . or .. see: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/rm/rm.c#L583 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/rm/rm.c#L... checkdot is called against all argv: https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/rm/rm.c#L150 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/rm/rm.c#L... any version of rm that does remove '.' or '..' is not POSIX compliant. The GNU coreutils version of rm does not contain this check: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob;f=src/rm.c;h=02809f21452c56cef035c653ef1686f1a747bca5;hb=master http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob;f... (edit: it does - thanks, was running from memory and didn't actually check it)