From: Junio C Hamano Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:13:59 GMT Subject: Re: Q: .gitignore and asterisk "*" Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20261103073317.DATcL%taahol@utu.fi> Tuomas Ahola writes: > Junio C Hamano wrote: > >> "Windl, Ulrich" writes: Please trim the lines that do not have any relevance to what you are going to comment on from your quoted material. >> - - An asterisk "`*`" matches anything except a slash. >> - The character "`?`" matches any one character except "`/`". >> - The range notation, e.g. `[a-zA-Z]`, can be used to match >> - one of the characters in a range. See fnmatch(3) and the >> - FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more detailed description. >> + - An asterisk "`*`" matches string of any length, and a question mark > > It's not unreasonable at all to call the empty string "a string of no length", > so it is still a bit ambiguous whether it qualifies as a string of any length. > I would suggest s/of any length/of length of zero or more/. A string of no length falls within the set of strings of any length, so I do not see any ambiguity there. "A string of length of zero or more" is a roundabout way to say "any string" as by definition there is no string of negative length. Perhaps that is good enough?