From: Michael J Gruber Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 07:52:19 GMT Subject: Re: gitignore: negating path patterns Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <5BBB5607-DF95-4C06-BE6C-C3D7AF475FBF@sb.org> 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).