Re: "git rm" seems to do recursive removal even without "-r"

[Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Sun, Oct 08, 2017 at 10:32:40AM -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
> Personally I don't use Git's magical globbing capabilities, and use "git
> rm" as if it were UNIX rm.  So in your request above I'd use:
> 
>    git rm $(find . -name Makefile)
> 
> which I find simpler.

I have to agree that git's magical globbing capabilities
are... strange.  (And apologies to Robert for my earlier post; I
didn't understand what he was complaining about.)  I don't use it
either, although I tend to use:

    find <find args> | xargs git rm

myself.

One thing which is interesting is that not only is the git's magical
globbing capabilities have somewhat unusual semantics, the how
globbing is done in .gitignore entries are completely different.

Shrug.  I put this in the same category as "tabs are significant in
Makefile's", "whitespace is significant in python", and "the many
varied different behaviours and uses of 'git reset'".

They are all idiosyncrancies of semantics of various highly popular
tools (which being highly popular, would make changing the details
quite difficult due to backwards compatibility concerns, even if we
wanted to change them).

						- Ted