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Comment by parhamn | Hacker News Reader

In bash/zsh and many other shells '*/*.c' would be similar.

I don't think so. In Bash you can do this:

  bash$ shopt -s globstar

Then you can use double star syntax like this:

  bash$ wc **/*.c

The **/ will match any number of directory components, including zero; I think it's like *.c */*.c */*/*.c and so on, like what OP wrote.

Somewhat sadly, the Glibc glob function does not have an equivalent GLOB_ option for this; it's just in Bash.

    -bash: shopt: globstar: invalid shell option name

Bash's NEWS file says that globstar was added between bash-3.2 and bash-4.0.

In the git repo, there is a 2009-dated commit 3185942a5234e26ab13fa02f9c51d340cec514f8 where the material appears, as a snapshot import.

Make sure you're using "shopt -s globstar" and not "shopt -o globstar".