Bash Wildcard use

Question

I am trying to remove files in a directory using rm and without deleting the directory itself in a script. The examples I see only do this while in the directory itself, and I would like to do it without navigating there.

I tried

rm "$(dirname $1)/filetokeep/*"

but it is not working. Any help?

Answer 1

Quoting the wildcard inhibits expansion.

rm -- "$(dirname -- "$1")/filetokeep"/*

Using -- ensures that values can't be interpreted as optional arguments rather than positional ones (so that things still work if the directory named in $1 starts with a -).