Hey Thomas, On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 1:09 AM, Thomas Gummerer <t.gummerer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > On 09/12, Pranit Bauva wrote: >> Hey everyone, >> >> One of my friend was trying to add files using the command `git add >> .*` and got an error that "fatal: ..: '..' is outside repository" >> which did seem a little obvious to me. But then I tried to reproduce >> it in my machine with `git add ".*"` and it didn't error out. I am >> currently using git 2.9.3 on Ubuntu 15.04 while he is using git 1.9.1 >> on Ubuntu 16.04. What might have gone wrong? > > The difference seems to be that you quoted the .*, which leaves the .* > in place for gits internal pathspec machinery, which then only > considers paths inside of the repository. > > The non quoted version your friend used meanwhile is expanded by the > shell itself, which seems to be expanding it to ., the current > directory, and .., the parent directory. This behaviour also depends > on the shell used, for me .* in bash includes the current as well as > the parent directory, while .* in zsh doesn't include either of these. This seems to be a reasonable reason. I had guessed the behaviour of the shell but didn't really know what was happening with the quoted version. And I guess it cannot really be fixed because it depends on the shell. I tried it out on bash though forgot to mention it. Thanks for the help! Regards, Pranit Bauva