Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > I wonder if there's a name that could more clearly distinguish the two. > Or if it's sufficient to just become Git jargon that "pathspec" is the > command-line one and "path_pattern" is the file-based one (we're at > least pretty consistent about the former already). > > I think one could also make an argument that the name collision is a > sign that these two things should actually share both syntax and > implementation, since we're exposing too similar-but-not-quite versions > of the same idea to users. But given the compatibility issues, it's > probably not worth changing the user facing parts at this point (and I > also haven't thought too hard about it; there may be reasons why the two > _should_ differ). Hmph. I did not realize there are so many differences X-<. A pathspec is relative to $CWD, and there is a syntax, i.e. prefixing with ":(top)", to make it relative to the root level. An entry in a .gitignore file will never affect paths outside the directory the file appears in. And there should never be such a mechanism to allow it. An entry without slash in .gitignore is a basename match, and there is a syntax i.e. prefixing with "/", to anchor it to a single directory. A pathspec without slash also can be a basename match (e.g. "*.c" matches "a/b.c" as well as "d.c"). A pathspec with a slash can be made to tail-match (e.g. "**/*.c" matches "a/b.c", "a/b/c.c", etc.) but I do not think of a way to make an entry with a slash in a .gitignore file a tail-match the same way. I do not think this is intended but merely a missing feature. So, yes, eventually we may want to make them more similar, but I suspect that there are some things that should be in one but never be in the other.
