[claudius]

  $ ls -l "*"
  ls: cannot access *: No such file or directory

Of course, you might want that exact behaviour, but sometimes you want e.g. all .table files in a path with a space. I believe

  $ ls -l "path with/lots of spaces/"*

is the correct solution, but it seems silly. I'm not entirely sure why variable expansion works inside double quotes but wildcard expansion doesn’t.

[elwin]

> I'm not entirely sure why variable expansion works inside double quotes but wildcard expansion doesn’t.

That's because a double-quoted expression is supposed to evaluate to a single word. Wildcard expansion can result in multiple words, but parameter expansion doesn't.

(Except for things like "$@". With bash, the rules always have exceptions.)

[claudius]

TIL. Thank you very much! :)