Re: Bug: git-add .* errors out

From: Thomas Gummerer <t.gummerer@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 11, 2016, 19:39 UTC
Message-ID: <20160911193906.GC8254@hank>
In-Reply-To: <CAFZEwPPSiy1dxZgxWg1saPcw2QWgHtZKx26oSN3g1mCv25=0AA@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On 09/12, Pranit Bauva wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hey everyone,
> 
> One of my friend was trying to add files using the command `git add
> .*` and got an error that "fatal: ..: '..' is outside repository"
> which did seem a little obvious to me. But then I tried to reproduce
> it in my machine with `git add ".*"` and it didn't error out. I am
> currently using git 2.9.3 on Ubuntu 15.04 while he is using git 1.9.1
> on Ubuntu 16.04. What might have gone wrong?

The difference seems to be that you quoted the .*, which leaves the .* in place for gits internal pathspec machinery, which then only considers paths inside of the repository.

The non quoted version your friend used meanwhile is expanded by the shell itself, which seems to be expanding it to ., the current directory, and .., the parent directory. This behaviour also depends on the shell used, for me .* in bash includes the current as well as the parent directory, while .* in zsh doesn't include either of these.

> Regards,
> Pranit Bauva

Hope this helps, Thomas