I used to do this kind of thing without any problems:
% echo /**/*/etc/r*(/N)
... but just trying it, zsh labors for close to an hour, then spits out
countless pages of:
/proc/9/root/etc/rc0.d /proc/9/root/etc/rc1.d /proc/9/root/etc/rc2.d
/proc/9/root/etc/rc3.d /proc/9/root/etc/rc4.d /proc/9/root/etc/rc5.d
/proc/9/root/etc/rc6.d /proc/9/root/etc/rcS.d /proc/9/root/etc/rsyslog.d
/proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc0.d /proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc1.d
/proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc2.d /proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc3.d
/proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc4.d /proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc5.d
/proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rc6.d /proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rcS.d
/proc/9/task/9/cwd/etc/rsyslog.d /proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc0.d
/proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc1.d /proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc2.d
/proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc3.d /proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc4.d
/proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc5.d /proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rc6.d
/proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rcS.d /proc/9/task/9/root/etc/rsyslog.d
... I'm wondering why /proc wasn't a problem previously and if there's
anything I can do to filter it out of the search -- probably all the
Linux 'system' directories too. I recall that there's some test,
something in permissions, some flag -- that identifies these
not-quite-real directories -- zsh knows who they are. They're really in
RAM, yes? I know the tilde is used to make exceptions:
for bb in *.eml~save*; do
... all files matching '*.eml' excepting those that match 'save*' ...
but I can't get the syntax correct with the above.
% echo /**/*/etc/r*~/proc*(/N)
% echo /**/*/etc/r*(/N)~/proc*
... were busts. But the right answer is to filter out all those virtual
directories. Don't know why this didn't used to be a problem. But I
think I did deal with this issue a few years ago, too.