SCP command Clarification

Question

I'm using the scp commands to pull some files from the remote server and one variation of the command is not working.

I have 2 files names one.xml and two.xml in a remote server and I'm pulling these two files into the current dir using the following command:

scp stuadmin@10.44.220.112:/student/class/Intermediate/one.xml .
scp stuadmin@10.44.220.112:/student/class/Intermediate/two.xml .

The above command works fine but if I use wildcards to pull all the xml files in a single shot as shown below it returns scp: No match.

scp stuadmin@10.44.220.112:/student/class/Intermediate/*.xml .

Why is it working if I pull the files individually and not working if I try to pull using wildcards.

Answer 1

I'm not sure why it's not working -- your simple example works in my tests.

As a potential suggestion, your wildcards may have to be escaped in order to avoid being interpreted by your local shell, before they get passed to the remote shell. So with your command, your local shell may be looking for files matching *.xml in your current working directory. Try encapsulating the remote part of the command with single quotes, as:

scp stuadmin@10.44.220.112:'/student/class/Intermediate/*.xml' .