Thanks for your follow-up. I wanted to ignore all files in the "data" folder except ".txt" ones. As mentioned in the gitignore doc, there should be a difference between "**" and "**/". > A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example, "abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative to the location of the .gitignore file, with infinite depth. and, > > A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash matches zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b" matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on. and also, > > It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that file is excluded. So, I excluded all files by "data/**", re-included just directories (at any depth) by "!data/**/" and, re-included ".txt" files (at any depth) by "!data/**/*.txt". However, if I wanted to re-include a directory and all of its contents, I could use something like "!data/data1/**", without trailing slash. As I see, there is no separation between "**" and "**/" in the current version. I think there is another point that the previous behavior test case should be like this: test_expect_success 'directories and ** matches' ' cat >.gitignore <<-\EOF && data/** !data/**/ !data/**/*.txt EOF git check-ignore file \ data/file data/data1/file1 data/data1/file1.txt \ data/data2/file2 data/data2/file2.txt >actual && cat >expect <<-\EOF && data/file data/data1/file1 data/data2/file2 EOF test_cmp expect actual ' Thanks Danial On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 1:40 AM Derrick Stolee <stolee@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 11/18/2021 12:04 PM, Jeff King wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 18, 2021 at 08:11:04PM +0330, Danial Alihosseini wrote: > > > >> What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) > >> Consider the following project structure > >> - data > >> - data1 > >> - file1 > >> - file1.txt > >> - data2 > >> - file2 > >> - file2.txt > >> - .gitignore > >> > >> > >> `.gitignore` is as follows: > >> ``` > >> data/** > >> !data/**/ > >> !data/**/*.txt > >> ``` > >> What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) > >> > >> I expect all files in `data` folder to be ignored except `.txt` files. > >> > >> What happened instead? (Actual behavior) > >> > >> `file1` and `file2` are not ignored. > >> Here is the `check-ignore` output: > >> ``` > >> $ git check-ignore -v data/data1/file1 > >> .gitignore:2:!/data/**/ data/data1/file1 > >> ``` > > > > Thanks for an easy reproduction. It looks like this changed in > > f6526728f9 (dir: select directories correctly, 2021-09-24). Author cc'd. > > Thanks for the bisect and CC. > > > The key thing seems to be that the second line of your .gitignore should > > match only directories (because of the trailing slash), but no longer > > does. > > Doesn't "matching only directories" mean it would match everything > within that directory? (It also means that "data/file" is not matched, > which is still correct.) > > My interpretation of these patterns is that everything in data/data1/ > and data/data2/ should not be ignored, making it seem like the change > fixed a bug (it definitely changed behavior). > > Just for extra clarity, this test currently passes: > > test_expect_success 'directories and ** matches' ' > cat >.gitignore <<-\EOF && > data/** > !data/**/ > !data/**/*.txt > EOF > git check-ignore file \ > data/file data/data1/file1 data/data1/file1.txt \ > data/data2/file2 data/data2/file2.txt >actual && > cat >expect <<-\EOF && > data/file > EOF > test_cmp expect actual > ' > > but the previous behavior would have passed this test: > > test_expect_success 'directories and ** matches' ' > cat >.gitignore <<-\EOF && > data/** > !data/**/ > !data/**/*.txt > EOF > git check-ignore file \ > data/file data/data1/file1.txt \ > data/data2/file2.txt >actual && > cat >expect <<-\EOF && > data/file > EOF > test_cmp expect actual > ' > > I seek more clarity on this. Specifically: if we match a directory > then should we not also match the contents within? > > Thanks, > -Stolee