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Using commands such as rsync and scp with ZSH I've run into trouble. Instead of the (normal) behaviour of giving me all matching files, it won't run and returns:

➜  ~  rsync -azP user@server:~/* ~/
zsh: no matches found: user@server:~/*

How can I fix this?

My .zshrc

ZSH=$HOME/.oh-my-zsh
ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell"
plugins=(git brew)
source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/local/sbin
Morgan
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3 Answers3

68

This is related with how ZSH manage globbing characters to generate filenames. By default, ZSH will generate the filenames and throw an error before executing the command if it founds no matches.

There are many ways to bypass this behavior, here are some of them:

  • The quickest is to enclose the globbing characters with quotes.
$ rsync -azP "user@server:~/*" ~/
  • For a permanent change, you'll have to add the following in your .zshrc file:
unsetopt nomatch

This will prevent ZSH to print an error when no match can be found.

  • Another possibility is to disable globbing for a particular command by using the noglob command modifier. By setting an alias in .zshrc for example:
alias scp='noglob scp'
Spack
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  • Thanks! Never had to do that with `bash`. – Morgan Apr 18 '13 at 06:36
  • @Morgan That's weird, actually. Without the quotes, Bash should expand the tilde before `rsync` ever sees it. Could it be that you were just using the same path for the home directory on both servers? – slhck Apr 18 '13 at 06:52
  • @slhck No, he's right. zsh has some more options to configure wildcards so this behavior can be changed in the zshrc. – Spack Apr 18 '13 at 07:30
  • I wasn't saying Morgan was wrong. I was just wondering why Bash doesn't expand the tilde before rsync, while Zsh seems to do that? – slhck Apr 18 '13 at 07:36
  • @Spack - you say it could be changes in `.zshrc`: can you elaborate a bit on how to configure this (perhaps edit your answer)? I'm looking for a way to do this without quoting the wildcard path. – sa125 Apr 18 '13 at 10:28
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    @sa125 I've edited my answer. – Spack Apr 18 '13 at 18:09
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    @slhck: `bash` only expands a tilde when it *begins* a word, or is the first character following a `:` or the first `=` in a variable assignment. Otherwise, it is treated literally. – chepner Apr 22 '13 at 18:08
10

I have been using zpretzo for quite a few months and also experienced this issue. I came across a neat and useful solution if you don't want to make any changes: simply prepend backslash to the command.

~/p/b/a/files ❯❯❯ scp *.* myserver@host:~/
*.*: No such file or directory

~/p/b/a/files ❯❯❯ \scp *.* myserver@host:~/
jquery.min.js                              100%   93KB  92.6KB/s   00:00
json2.min.js                               100%   3377   3.3KB/s   00:00

I hope this helps!

superuseroi
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7

This solves your problem without having to manually quote the URLs

autoload -U url-quote-magic  
zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic

# sort it out for SCP
some_remote_commands=(scp rsync)
zstyle -e :urlglobber url-other-schema \
  '[[ $some_remote_commands[(i)$words[1]] -le ${#some_remote_commands} ]] && reply=("*") || reply=(http https ftp)'
Francisco
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  • And this goes in .zshrc? – Morgan Apr 18 '13 at 15:31
  • yes, this goes into your zsh configuration. FWIW, just start a new shell (`zsh -f` for a canonical shell conf), copy&paste the commands in your shell, and type (or paste) your `rsync` command. You'll see the magic at work ;-) (special chars at the URL will get automatically quoted) – Francisco Apr 19 '13 at 11:33
  • you should accept my answer :-P this is a lot better than quoting or turning off globing for whole command. – Francisco Apr 19 '13 at 13:28