From: Jonathan Nieder Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:07:11 GMT Subject: [PATCH 1/4] Documentation/gitignore: "foo/" patterns match directories, not files under them Message-ID: <20111107080711.GA30486@elie.hsd1.il.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20111107080449.GA30448@elie.hsd1.il.comcast.net> The gitignore(5) manpage says that "foo/" will match a directory foo and paths underneath it. But that is completely false: as Johannes Sixt likes to remind us, patterns with a trailing '/' match the named directory, not files under that directory. For example, the following .gitignore file /build/ !/build/tests/results does not un-ignore build/tests/results since it was never ignored in the first place; and commands like "git status" will not notice changes to build/tests/results because git doesn't enter the (ignored) build/ directory. Correct the manual to just say that "foo/" matches the directory "foo", and make the wording a little clearer in other ways while at it. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder --- Documentation/gitignore.txt | 14 ++++++++------ 1 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt index 2e7328b8..5b070bf0 100644 --- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt +++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt @@ -72,12 +72,14 @@ PATTERN FORMAT included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence patterns sources. - - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the - purpose of the following description, but it would only find - a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a - directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a - regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent - with the way how pathspec works in general in git). + - If the pattern ends with a slash, it will only match + directories. In other words, `foo/` will match a + directory `foo` but will not match a regular file or a + symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent with the way + pathspecs work in general in git). ++ +The trailing slash is removed before applying the remaining +rules. - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the -- 1.7.8.rc0