Is there a bash setting to auto escape asterisks (*) if it is connected with a string?

Question

I am trying to debug why a script didn't do what I wanted on my server. And while testing I found a curiosity. I have a directory that looks roughly like this:

bash-4.3# ls -l ./
total 0
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Aug  6 05:46 db.local.php
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Aug  6 05:46 global.php
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Aug  6 05:46 local.php
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Aug  6 05:46 someOther.global.php

Look at running this command, the output is exactly what I expected:

bash-4.3# for i in ./*; do echo $i; done
./db.local.php
./global.php
./local.php
./someOther.global.php

But when I run this command the output doesn't make sense. For some reason the asterisk is escaped:

bash-4.3# for i in ./*local.php; do echo $i; done
*local.php

This happens on one server with bash 4.3.30 installed. I tried to recreate the same behaviour locally in bash 4.4 and in a docker container bash:4.3 (which is bash 4.3.48), but I couldn't recreate the issue.

Is there any setting that could account for it? Anything chance that is not just a bug?

Small addendum I just figured out before sending this off: If I start the same docker container on the server, it behaves the same way, making it extremely unlike to be a settings issue, since nothing from the host system was mounted in the container. Still, I am not sure what it could be, so has anyone any idea?

EDIT: @grawity

bash-4.3$ for i in ./*; do declare -p i; done
declare -- i="./db.local.php"
declare -- i="./global.php"
declare -- i="./local.php"
declare -- i="./someOther.global.php"
bash-4.3$ for i in ./*local.php; do declare -p i; done
declare -- i="./db.local.php"
declare -- i="./local.php"
bash-4.3$ for i in ./*; do echo $i; done
./db.local.php
./global.php
./local.php
./someOther.global.php
bash-4.3$ for i in ./*local.php; do echo $i; done
./db.local.php
./local.php

I don't understand it. after declaring it, it started to work normally. It also works normally with other files that have other endings. I don't understand what just happened.

SOLUTION: Thanks to grawity for his help. I made some mistakes in my testing above apparently. It looks like the behaviour above is the standard behaviour when there is no file fulfilling the asterisk completion.

Answer 1

SOLUTION: Thanks to grawity for his help. I made some mistakes in my testing above apparently. It looks like the behaviour above is the standard behaviour when there is no file fulfilling the asterisk completion.