Is there an easy way to set nullglob for one glob

Unset it when done:

shopt -u nullglob

And properly (i.e. storing the previous state):

shopt -u | grep -q nullglob && changed=true && shopt -s nullglob... do whatever you want ...[ $changed ] && shopt -u nullglob; unset changed

With mapfile in Bash 4, you can load an array from a subshell with something like: mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done). Full example:

$ shopt nullglobnullglob        off$ find../bar baz./qux quux$ mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done)$ shopt nullglobnullglob        off$ echo ${#array[@]}2$ echo ${array[0]}bar baz$ echo ${array[1]}qux quux$ rm *$ mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done)$ echo ${#array[@]}0

• Be sure to glob with ./* instead of a bare * when using echo to print the file name
• Doesn't work with newline characters in the filename :( as pointed out by derobert

If you need to handle newlines in the filename, you will have to do the much more verbose:

array=()while read -r -d $'\0'; do    array+=("$REPLY")done < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do printf "$f\0"; done)

But by this point, it may be simpler to follow the advice of one of the other answers.

This is just a tiny bit better than your original suggestion:

local nullglob=$(shopt -p nullglob) ; shopt -s nullglob

... do whatever you want ...

$nullglob ; unset nullglob