The action to take upon no match is configurable in recent Bash versions. The 'failglob' shopt option will cause an error to be generated if a glob matches not

The action to take upon no match is configurable in recent Bash versions. The 'failglob' shopt option will cause an error to be generated if a glob matches nothing. The 'nullglob' shopt option toggles between no match expanding to an empty string and the traditional default of no match leaving the glob characters untouched.