bash: glob hidden files recursively

09 Dec, 2024 • 102 words • 1 min • updated 05 Sep, 2025

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Assume you make a huge change to your git repository, that spawns several file formats – cpp, java, javascript, python, etc.

In the end you want to revert the javascript changes, for the sake of splitting your commit into self-contained chunks¹.

I like the following approach²:

shell

% git checkout -- **/*.js

Caveat: It does not include hidden files, or files in hidden directories. Unless…you set the dotglob option:

shell

% shopt -s dotglob

Note that shopt works in bash, alas not in zsh.

https://sscce.org/ ↩︎
In theory, this is a pre-requisite: shopt -s globstar. In practice, it should be the default behavior. ↩︎