On Sat, Apr 24 2021, Shoaib Meenai wrote: > Hi all, > > When I use a `**/` glob pattern with `git diff`, it doesn't seem to > match in the root directory. The documentation for gitgnore says that a > leading `**/` should match in all directories, and I would expect it to > behave the same way for `git diff`. For example: > > $ git --version > git version 2.31.1.527.g47e6f16901 # built from the `next` branch > $ mkdir /tmp/globtest && cd /tmp/globtest > $ git init > $ echo foo > foo > $ mkdir sub > $ echo subfoo > sub/foo > $ git add . > $ git commit -m 'Initial commit' > $ echo bar > foo > $ echo subbar > sub/foo > $ git --no-pager diff '**/foo' > diff --git a/sub/foo b/sub/foo > index ef7889f..2b2ab6c 100644 > --- a/sub/foo > +++ b/sub/foo > @@ -1 +1 @@ > -subfoo > +subbar > > Only the diff to `sub/foo` is printed, whereas I'd expect the change to > the top-level `foo` to be printed as well. `git diff '**foo'` does behave > as I would expect. This also happens with a `**` in the middle of a > pattern; e.g., `sub/**/bar` will match `sub/dir/bar` but not `sub/bar`. > > Am I misunderstanding how `**` should work, or is this a bug? It's not a bug in behavior, but reading the documentation I think it's buggy in describing how it works. The behavior of ** here is to match anything, including a slash, but you yourself are providing the slash with "**/". This behavior is different under :(glob) where we would match "foo" on the top-level. See t/t3070-wildmatch.sh, is particular the "**/foo" test-case. We adopted this code from rsync originally, I think its manual page is better at describing how it works, as an aside I see they've since added a "***" which we won't have, and maybe some other features.
