RE: Missing ? wildcard character in gitignore documentation

From: Randall S. Becker <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
Date: Jan 29, 2018, 15:47 UTC
Message-ID: <000f01d39918$70009eb0$5001dc10$@nexbridge.com>
In-Reply-To: <903a193c-0360-59bc-4d86-6470ac8dc1a8@bytes.nz>

On January 29, 2018 6:30 AM, Jack F wrote:

Show 28 quoted lines

> I have just noticed that the documentation for gitignore is missing
> documentation on using the ? to match any single character. I have included
> a example below with git version 2.14.1.
> 
> |11:05:09 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master] $ git status On branch
> master Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'. nothing to commit,
> working tree clean 11:05:11 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master] $ cat
> .gitignore *~ node_modules yarn* 11:05:21 j ~/Development/ls-ignore
> [master] $ touch test.swo 11:05:31 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master]?1 $
> git status On branch master Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
> Untracked files: (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
> test.swo nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add"
> to track) 11:05:35 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master]?1 $ echo "*.sw?" >>
> .gitignore 11:05:40 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master]≠1 $ cat .gitignore *~
> node_modules
> yarn* *.sw? 11:05:51 j ~/Development/ls-ignore [master]≠1 $ git status On
> branch master Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'. Changes not
> staged for commit: (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be
> committed) (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working
> directory) modified: .gitignore no changes added to commit (use "git add"
> and/or "git commit -a")|
> 
> 
> 
> Noticed it when checking an npm package (ignore) that uses the
> documentation (https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore) to determine its
> functionality. It is documented in https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-
> Basics-Recording-Changes-to-the-Repository#Ignoring-Files

The implication of support for ? is there through the following paragraph from the gitignore documentation:

    "Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for consumption by fnmatch(3)
    with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the
    pathname. For example, "Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html"
    but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html"."

Of course you have to go read fnmatch(3), so it might be good for expand on this here :).

Cheers, Randall

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