problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[John]

I am using graysky's zsh config files which can be found on his github: https://github.com/graysky2/configs/tree/master/shell

When I try to scp wildcards from remote servers, I get errors:


% scp facade@gogo:~/*.xz .
zsh: no matches found: facade@gogo:~/*.xz

But if I do it without wildcards, no problems ...why :)

% scp facade@gogo:~/webcam.tar.xz .
webcam.tar.xz                                                                                 100%  928KB 464.1KB/s   00:02    

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[Eike von Seggern]

Hi John,

you need to escape the *, e.g. by putting it into quotes:

scp "user@host:/path/to/*" .

Otherwise zsh tries to expand it on your local machine and fails, hence
the "zsh:…" message. Note that zsh's default behaviour differs here from
bash in that bash inserts a literal * if the glob-expansion failed while
zsh returns with the error you've encountered.

Best
Eike


On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 03:46 -0700, John wrote:
> I am using graysky's zsh config files which can be found on his github: https://github.com/graysky2/configs/tree/master/shell
> 
> When I try to scp wildcards from remote servers, I get errors:
> 
> 
> % scp facade@gogo:~/*.xz .
> zsh: no matches found: facade@gogo:~/*.xz
> 
> But if I do it without wildcards, no problems ...why :)
> 
> % scp facade@gogo:~/webcam.tar.xz .
> webcam.tar.xz                                                                                 100%  928KB 464.1KB/s   00:02    

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2013-03-17 13:33:08 +0100, Eike von Seggern wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> you need to escape the *, e.g. by putting it into quotes:
> 
> scp "user@host:/path/to/*" .
> 
> Otherwise zsh tries to expand it on your local machine and fails, hence
> the "zsh:…" message. Note that zsh's default behaviour differs here from
> bash in that bash inserts a literal * if the glob-expansion failed while
> zsh returns with the error you've encountered.

Concerning this behavior, zsh is more secure than POSIX shells such
as bash.

But to have * escaped automatically, url-quote-magic can be used.
See e.g.

  http://traviscj.com/tricks/?p=8
  http://superuser.com/questions/420525/scp-with-zsh-no-matches-found

and more generally:

  https://www.google.com/search?q=%22url-quote-magic%22+%22scp%22

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[John]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my thread.

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[Valodim Skywalker]

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There is also setopt nonomatch to make globbing behave like it does in
bash, but you most certainly do not want that. Getting into the habit of
quoting where you don't want the shell to apply its expansions is a good
idea.

 - V


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Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[Jérémie Roquet]

2013/3/17 John <da_audiophile@yahoo.com>:
> Thank you.  Perhaps an alias ?
>
> alias scp='noglob scp'

Keep in mind that it prevents local expansion for the whole line, so,
with this alias, you wouldn't be able to do things like “scp ./*.xz
facade@gogo:~/” anymore.

Best regards,

-- 
Jérémie

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[John]

Thank you.  Perhaps an alias ?

alias scp='noglob scp'


----- Original Message -----
> From: Jérémie Roquet <arkanosis@gmail.com>
> To: John <da_audiophile@yahoo.com>
> Cc: "zsh-users@zsh.org" <zsh-users@zsh.org>
> Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2013 12:20 PM
> Subject: Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 2013/3/17 John <da_audiophile@yahoo.com>:
>>  Thank you. Can zsh be modified easily in a config file to behave as bash 
> with scp?
> 
> unsetopt nomatch
> 
> I wouldn't advice to use this, however, as it still wouldn't do what
> you expect it to do if the expansion is possible locally.
> 
> You should rather use something like “noglob scp facade@gogo:~/*.xz
> .”, which prevents local expansion.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -- 
> Jérémie
>

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[Jérémie Roquet]

Hi,

2013/3/17 John <da_audiophile@yahoo.com>:
> Thank you. Can zsh be modified easily in a config file to behave as bash with scp?

unsetopt nomatch

I wouldn't advice to use this, however, as it still wouldn't do what
you expect it to do if the expansion is possible locally.

You should rather use something like “noglob scp facade@gogo:~/*.xz
.”, which prevents local expansion.

Best regards,

-- 
Jérémie

Re: problem with zsh and wildcards in scp commands

[John]

Thank you. Can zsh be modified easily in a config file to behave as bash with scp?