Maris Razvan <razvan.alex.maris@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I was reading the gitignore documentation > (https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore), especially the following > paragraph: > > "If the pattern does not contain a slash /, Git treats it as > a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname > relative to the location of the .gitignore file (relative to the > toplevel of the work tree if not from a .gitignore file)." > > From that paragraph I understand that if I have the following > directory structure: > > .gitignore > a > f > > (the root of the repository contains the file .gitignore and the > folder a, while the file f is inside folder a) > where the file .gitignore contains only the pattern f, when file "f" > is tested whether it should be ignored or not, the pattern f in > .gitignore is matched against the "pathname relative to the location > of the .gitignore file" (which is a/f). Because "f" (the pattern) does > not match "a/f" (the pathname relative to the location of .gitignore), > the file "f" should not be ignored. However, if I test this scenario, > git ignores the file (this behaviour is consistent with the examples > from the rest of the documentation and other explanations on the > internet). > > I looked at the history of the "Documentation/gitignore.txt" file on > the github repository and I saw that initially the paragraph looked > like this: > > "If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as > a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the pathname > without leading directories." > > This old version of the paragraph is consistent with git's current behaviour. > > Then I saw the following commit > https://github.com/git/git/commit/81c13fde379c46cad6b6e4a03ed7ee4f686c030f#diff-7fea460d44f92f185e7add8aa5620305, > which changed that paragraph to the current version. > However, I cannot see how the two wordings (the original one and the > current one) are the same. Thanks. Jonathan, after re-reading 81c13fde ("gitignore.5: Clarify matching rules", 2010-03-05), I do not recall why we thought this part of the change was a good idea, either. Patterns with slash is anchored at one directory, and that directory is the one that has per-directory .gitignore file. Patterns without slash (including a pattern that ends with but otherwise has no other slash) are supposed to match at every level below the directory that the pattern is defined in. Documentation/gitignore.txt | 4 +--- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt index 1c94f08ff4..bf1182169e 100644 --- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt +++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt @@ -98,9 +98,7 @@ PATTERN FORMAT - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', Git treats it as a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the - pathname relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file - (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a - `.gitignore` file). + pathname without leading directories. - Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob: "`*`" matches anything except "`/`", "`?`" matches any one character except "`/`"
