CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgitignore
starikcetin
starikcetin

Reputation: 1485

gitignore pattern doesn't work without double stars

This pattern works properly:

**/Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains*

But this pattern doesn't:

Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains*

As far as I know, these two patterns are equivalent. What might be the problem here?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 939

Answers (2)

torek
torek

Reputation: 489083

As far as I know, these two patterns are equivalent.

They aren't.

Git has a poorly-documented sneaky feature (bug? annoyance? call it whatever you like, though it's meant as a feature) in which a glob pattern in a .gitignore file is sometimes anchored or rooted—it's not clear what word to use here—and sometimes not. I think this is best explained by example.

Suppose you have the following files:

/a
/b
/dir/a
/dir/b
/dir/sub/a
/dir/sub/b

That is, the top level directory has two files, a and b, and one directory dir. Inside dir there are two files a and b, and another directory sub, and in that last one there are two files a and b.

Listing a in your .gitignore means ignore all files named a,1 so that covers three of the six files.

However, listing /a in your .gitignore means ignore file named a in the top level only, i.e., ignore just one file.

It's the presence of the slash at any position other than the end that triggers this feature, so listing dir/a in your top-level file means ignore file named a in the dir directory only, i.e., just /dir/a. If we made a new file dir/sub/dir/a, that would not be ignored: dir/a means the same as /dir/a.

One might expect only a leading slash to do this, but in fact, it's any slash, except at the end, that does this. The except at the end part means that if you list sub/ in your top level .gitignore, Git will ignore both files inside dir/sub, because the slash is removed from the end before applying the "contains a slash" rule, then put back on the end for the "matches a directory" rule.

The result is that if you mean to ignore Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains* at any level—not just the current level (wherever this particular .gitignore file lives within your work-tree)—you need the **/ prefix.

Note that you can have a .gitignore file at each level, so you could just find directories named Editor, and if they are in an Assets/Plugins/ containing directory, create a .gitignore here that lists JetBrains*. That would have the same effect as writing **/Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains* at the top level.

1Ignore is really the wrong verb. A file won't be ignored if it's already tracked; listing a file in .gitignore means don't complain about this file if it's untracked, and don't automatically add it with an en-masse "add all files" command. It also gives Git permission to clobber the file in certain cases. But calling the file .git-dont-complain-about-untracked-and-dont-auto-add-and-sometimes-feel-free-to-clobber-these-files would be unweidly, so we say "ignore"...

Upvotes: 7

CodeWizard
CodeWizard

Reputation: 142362

**/Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains*
Will ignore the path doesn't matter what is the root folder of the Assets which mean it can be nested.

Assets/Plugins/Editor/JetBrains*
Will ignore the path statring from the current folder

**/ means that it can be "nested" inside any folder under the location of the current path

Upvotes: 1

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