Re: Gitignore matching "git add" wildcard prevents operation

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 15, 2010, 18:17 UTC
Message-ID: <7v7hrj1bd5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100115161107.GC12982@vidovic>

Nicolas Sebrecht <nicolas.s.dev@gmx.fr> writes:

>> My complaint was more that as a user, I am not likely to see this
>> problem and think "I'll bet git-specific globbing can solve it."
>
> Yes. My point is that we are not talking about a Git specific issue.

Actually it is. The thing is, git subcommands do *not* take individual filenames in general from their command line. They _always_ take pathspecs, find files in the work tree that match the pathspecs (but excludes ignored ones), and work on them [*1*].

Other commands usually don't do that.

So "git add ." and "git add 'a.*'" behave exactly the same way. Both find files that match their respective pathspecs. The former knows that "." matches "all files that exist in the cwd (excluding ignored ones)" and the latter knows that "a.*" matches "all files that fnmatch(3) 'a.*' glob (excluding ignored ones)". Hence you will not get "don't try to add a file that you said you want to ignore; use -f if you mean it".

[Footnote]

*1* There are exceptions, such as parameters to the "--file" option, and "git blame".