Bracket "filename" problem

[Jed Donnelley <jed nersc gov>]

If I type the following:

# rpm -pq 'ab[1].rpm'
#

the result is noted above - namely the command returns nothing.  This 
behavior is common to a variety of updated Redhat systems (7.1, 7.3, ES 2.1 
at least) running rpm-4.0.4-7x, rpm-4.0.4-7x.18, and rpm-4.0.4-7x.20 
respectively.  This behavior seems to be dependent on the "[1]" in the 
'filename'.  The name is apparently not interpreted as a filename as there 
is no attempt to open it.  It doesn't matter if there is a file name there 
or not.  Also the same behavior is observed with other options, e.g.:

# rpm -Fvh [1]
#

Is there something about this bracket ("[]") syntax that I don't know that 
I should?  I've poked around in places like Google, redhat.com, and rpm.org 
and in some RPM books and manuals but have been unable to come up with an 
explanation.  I expect I'm missing something simple, but I've already 
wasted the better part of the day on it and since I can easily work around 
it I need to move on.

Incidentally, I didn't come by this syntax issue with random 
experimentation.  When I was downloading the RPMs to make the updates 
needed for the recent Redhat certificate expiration issue, for some reason 
the names of the RPMs came out for me as:

-rw-r--r--    1 jed      ccc        196463 Sep  2 11:52 
rhn_register-2[1].8.27-1.7.3.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 jed      ccc         73604 Sep  2 11:59 
rhn_register-gnome-2[1].8.27-1.7.3.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 jed      ccc        355189 Sep  2 11:51 
up2date-2[1].8.40-3.7.3.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--    1 jed      ccc         99178 Sep  2 11:59 
up2date-gnome-2[1].8.40-3.7.3.i386.rpm

Clearly with the above behavior of RPM when I tried even:

# rpm -Fvh *.rpm
#

with these files (expanded by my shell), nothing happened.

Thanks for any time to let me know what is going on with the above.

Sincerely, James E. (Jed) Donnelley
http://www.nersc.gov/~jed/
--Jed http://www.nersc.gov/~jed/