You can place a backslash ( \ ) directly before the asterisk. This tells the shell to ignore the special meaning of the very next character. unzip archive.zip stage\* Use code with caution. Common Real-World Scenarios & Fixes
Encountering the error while working with ZIP archives in Linux or macOS is a common hurdle, particularly during automated build scripts, CI/CD pipelines, or complex file unzipping tasks.
Single quotes tell Bash to treat every character inside them literally. This stops the shell from expanding the asterisk. unzip target_archive.zip 'stage_components*' Use code with caution. 2. Wrap the Filename in Double Quotes You can place a backslash ( \ ) directly before the asterisk
: Run unzip -l archive.zip to list all files inside the archive without extracting them. Verify that the string stage_components actually exists in the file paths.
By default, when you type a wildcard like *.zip , your terminal shell tries to expand that wildcard into a list of matching files before passing the command to the unzip tool. Common Real-World Scenarios & Fixes Encountering the error
unzip archive.zip stage-component1.txt stage-component2.txt
: You want the unzip program itself to look inside the ZIP archive for files matching that naming pattern. To do that, you must prevent the shell from interpreting the asterisk. How to Fix It unzip target_archive
On some newer systems, the behavior of wildcards regarding directory separators has changed. If you need to match files across subdirectories recursively, you might need to use the ** wildcard instead of a single * .
for f in *.zip; do echo "Processing $f" unzip "$f" -d "$f%.zip_extracted" done
If the shell finds no local files matching the pattern, one of two things happens depending on your shell settings:
unzip build.zip stage/components/* # Triggers: unzip cannot find any matches for wildcard specification Use code with caution. unzip build.zip "stage/components/*" Use code with caution. Summary Checklist
