zsh: no matches found

Question

It seems I have some zsh misconfiguration. I use youtube-dl regular to download videos. But since a few days, I get this error

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkd6JkfI4yk
zsh: no matches found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkd6JkfI4yk

I did not change anything with my zsh configuration. Why do I get this error message and how can I make it work again?

FYI I don’t have oh-my-zsh installed.

grg · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-22 18:16:02Z

6

You need to escape the ? and = using backslashes:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=mkd6JkfI4yk

answered Sep 22, 2016 at 18:16

grg♦

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1

Thanks, this works, but why is this happening now? In bash it works fine.
– Sebastian Semmler
Sep 22, 2016 at 19:11
3

@SebastianSemmler ? is a globbing pattern for any one character. In Bash, if no matching files are found, the ? is treated as a literal ? character, whereas in ZSH, no such exception is made. Thus, e.g. if we create the file test-x.txt, then echo test-?.txt will output test-x.txt in both Bash and ZSH, but if we delete the file, then Bash outputs test-?.txt, whereas ZSH complains that it can't find any files with matching names: no matches found.
– Jivan Pal
Jan 26, 2020 at 18:58

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Chase Roberts · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-26 12:23:33Z

4

Wrapping in quotes also works

youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkd6JkfI4yk"

answered Jan 26, 2020 at 12:23

Chase Roberts

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