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From: Dan Drake <dan@dandrake.org>
To: "git@vger.kernel.org" <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: gitignore documentation for info/exclude files and patterns with relative directories
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:20:42 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Qdk5yVH_yWgKl_bjCjdasusfe3PuzHCZ2rKgKIn2Xx5rcw46jmQDfA6K2vkv3V3XLSy4aqwyUlfVEmF5VlIv3EVEOlZLEnf-paw11tyhZKE=@dandrake.org> (raw)

Hello,

In the "pattern format" section of the gitignore manpage, it says:

> The slash "/" is used as the directory separator. Separators may occur at the
> beginning, middle or end of the .gitignore search pattern.
>
> If there is a separator at the beginning or middle (or both) of the pattern,
> then the pattern is relative to the directory level of the particular
> .gitignore file itself. Otherwise the pattern may also match at any
> level below the .gitignore level.

For a .git/info/exclude file, the above makes it sound like the pattern will be 
relative to that .git/info directory, so that you would need to use this kind of p
attern to match files starting with 'foo' in the root of the repo:

../../foo*

However, it seems that for patterns in the info/exclude file, the beginning
slash anchors the pattern to the root of the repo; the above pattern
in that file should be '/foo*'.

The documentation should mention this behavior for info/exclude, as well as 
the core.excludesFile.



Dan





--
Ceci n'est pas une .signature.



             reply	other threads:[~2026-03-27 11:26 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-03-27 11:20 Dan Drake [this message]
2026-03-27 16:18 ` gitignore documentation for info/exclude files and patterns with relative directories Junio C Hamano
2026-03-28 15:21   ` [PATCH] doc: gitignore: clarify pattern base for info/exclude and core.excludesFile Shreyansh Paliwal

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