Re: gitignore: negating path patterns

> Kevin Ballard venit, vidit, dixit 23.05.2008 02:23:
>> On May 21, 2008, at 7:52 AM, Michael J Gruber wrote:
>>> Hi there
>>>
>>> It seems that negating path patterns in gitignore doesn't work, or I
>>> don't understand it (or both). With the attached script, git status
>>> (1.5.5.1) reports "dir/a" as new and "dir/b" as untracked. I would
>>> rather expect it to report "dir/c" as untracked also.
>>>
>>> It seems that "!b" matches to include "dir/b" (reverting the  
>>> exclusion
>>> "*" as expected), whereas "!dir/" does not match to include "dir/c".
>>>
>>> What's going on here?
>> "dir/" will not match anything, because paths are compared without   
>> trailing slashes. Try "!dir".
>
> I am sorry, but this is plain wrong, at least if "man gitignore" is  
> right (see below). "!dir" would match files whose name (pathname  
> without leading directory name) matches "dir" (i.e.: is dir) and  
> exclude those from exclusion (include them).
>
> Also, replacing "!dir/" by "!dir" in my test script does not change  
> the result. In fact, for "!dir" the result is as expected and  
> documented, just for "!dir/" I would expect something else.
>
> So, thanks for trying to help, although reading the manual or  
> testing your advice before would be appreciated even more. ;)
>
> Michael
>
> From man gitignore:
>
> 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).