Way to reproduce: $ git --version git version 2.24.0 $ mkdir /tmp/checkignore $ cd /tmp/checkignore $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/checkignore/.git/ $ echo '!*.txt' > .gitignore $ git check-ignore 1.txt 1.txt $ echo $? 0 I believe this is a bug because it contradicts check-ignore documentation: 0 - One or more of the provided paths is ignored. 1 - None of the provided paths are ignored. This bug isn't hard to fix, however: 1. That causes several tests to fail because they test for exit code that I concider to be wrong. 2. I'm not sure how to handle negated masks when check-ignore prints matching patterns. Printing what pattern caused file to be *not* ignored seems useful, but others may think that there's "mask is printed iff the file is ignored" rule. diff --git a/builtin/check-ignore.c b/builtin/check-ignore.c index 5a4f92395f..d0711434e6 100644 --- a/builtin/check-ignore.c +++ b/builtin/check-ignore.c @@ -111,7 +111,7 @@ static int check_ignore(struct dir_struct *dir, } if (!quiet && (pattern || show_non_matching)) output_pattern(pathspec.items[i].original, pattern); - if (pattern) + if (pattern && !(pattern->flags & PATTERN_FLAG_NEGATIVE)) num_ignored++; } free(seen);