From: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2018 17:59:07 GMT
Subject: Re: Cannot negate `*` ignore pattern for directory with space in the name
Message-ID: <CACsJy8Cbp+1-CXMup4m=qLgJA511X0NtM51sFma_8nmp4_EhKg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <955f404f-83ed-758e-017b-d6b4a1f69ef7@catalyst.net.nz>

On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 6:13 AM Victor Engmark
<victorengmark@catalyst.net.nz> wrote:
>
> To reproduce (from <https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/469708/3645>):
>
> $ cd "$(mktemp --directory)"
> $ mkdir foo\ bar
> $ touch foo\ bar/test
> $ git init
> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/tmp.iGmBR6y2xR/.git/
> $ git status --short
> ?? foo bar/
> $ cat > .gitignore << EOF
> > *
> > !foo bar
> > !foo\ bar
> > !"foo bar"

No need to quote, either with double quotes or backslashes. They are
interpreted as literal " and \

> $ git status --short
> [no output]

It's not exactly a bug, more like a trap. '*' matches anything, at
every level. So even if you negate 'foo bar', when we check 'foo
bar/test', '*' pattern applies again and ignores 'foo bar/test'. If
the first line in .gitignore is /* instead of * (to keep match
anything at the top level directory only), then it should work.
-- 
Duy