threads / discuss / 47053

Wildcards with git rm

Subject: Wildcards with git rm

## tl;dr

2 messages between Oct 28, 2017 and Oct 30, 2017.

replies: 1people: 2as markdown or json

RPS· Oct 28, 2017, 11:38 UTC · lore

git rm doesn't seem to be very useful without the use of shell wildcards, especially with the use of a .gitignore file. If a .gitignore file is used, the git rm command does not consider the .gitignore file, and errs out when an ignored file is present.

In my opinion, git rm should take .gitignore into consideration and suppress errors for those files along with all other commands in order to target valid repository files in the current version. Also, git rm should either remove the ignored files and other present files in the working copy to act like a shell rm command along with existing version controlled objects from the version, or skip ignored working copy files and err out on files not accounted for in the current version.

Have there been any design considerations on these things?

Jim Lutz

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Junio C Hamano· Oct 30, 2017, 00:58 UTC · re: RPS · lore

Re: Wildcards with git rm

RPS <jim@resplendentwebservices.com> writes:

> git rm doesn't seem to be very useful without the use of shell
> wildcards, especially with the use of a .gitignore file. If a
> .gitignore file is used, the git rm command does not consider the
> .gitignore file, and errs out when an ignored file is present.

Do you mean

	$ git rm COPY*

would complain about COPYING~ on your filesystem, which would match the pattern "*~" you have in your .gitignore file, after editing the tracked COPYING file?

If so, you may choose to tell your shell _not_ to expand wildcards, as it does not know what is ignored, by doing

	$ git rm COPY\*

instead. That would allow "git rm" to expand wildcards _with_ the knowledge of what is and is not ignored. The shell does not know (probably you could teach if you wanted to, but it does not want to know) and care about .gitignore files when it does its wildcard expansion.