From: Windl, Ulrich <u.windl@ukr.de>
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:46:01 GMT
Subject: Q: .gitignore and asterisk "*"
Message-ID: <07b3498d83424cac87221724b371839a@ukr.de>

Hi!

I think the documentation for gitignore(5) could be improved regarding "*":
It's nor clear whether "*" matches an empty string.
So when I have
foo.log
foo.msg
foo.sh
foo-whatever.log
foo-whetever.msg
Would e.g. "foo*.log" cover all the logs?

The manual says:
       •   An asterisk "*" matches anything except a slash. The character "?"
           matches any one character except "/". The range notation, e.g.
           [a-zA-Z], can be used to match one of the characters in a range.
           See fnmatch(3) and the FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed
           description.

Kind regards,
Ulrich Windl