rm fails to delete files by wildcard from a script, but works from a shell prompt

Question

I\'ve run into a really silly problem with a Linux shell script. I want to delete all files with the extension \".bz2\" in a directory. In the script I call

rm \         


        

Answer 1

Your original line

rm "$archivedir/*.bz2"

Can be re-written as

rm "$archivedir"/*.bz2

to achieve the same effect. The wildcard expansion is not taking place properly in your existing setup. By shifting the double-quote to the "front" of the file path (which is legitimate) you avoid this.