In case anyone else hits this (admittedly very specific) problem, nathyong (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11461326 )'s suggestion, and a subsequent USE (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/276731/shell-eating-...) question, made it clear that my issue is that I had some time turned on `nullglob`, so `https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbKJt1NQtZE ` was being taken as a very strange, certainly non-matching, glob.