.gitignore glob pattern matching example

.gitignore cheatsheet on glob syntax.md

example patterns for .gitignore files

These examples assume you created a new repository at c:\projects\cat_translator

Special Characters

character	description
lines starting with '#'	this is a comment, git ignores these lines
*	matches everything except /
?	matches a single character that is anything except /
lines starting with '!'	they negate a pattern, including instead of ignoring
/	directory or path separator
lines ending with /	only matches directories
[ac]	matches the letter a or c
[a-f]	matches any letter in the range: a, b, c, d, e, f
[0-4]	matches a number in the range 0, 1, 2, 3, 4
[a-zA-Z]	matches any letter, capital or lowercase
a/**/b	matches zero or more subdirectories between a and b

backup.zip or *.zip are equivalent to **/backup.zip and **/*.zip a/**/b matches a/b, a/x/b, a/x/y/b

Ignoring filetypes for any directory

*.zip

ignoring folders in any directory

zipfiles/

This excludes

• c:\projects\cat_translator\zipfiles\
• c:\projects\cat_translator\images\zipfiles\

Ignoring files that begin with '2020' that are '.md' files

2020*.md

This excludes

• c:\projects\cat_translator\2020-summary.md
• c:\projects\cat_translator\backup\2020-summary.md
• c:\projects\cat_translator\backup\2020.jpg.md

This allows

• c:\projects\cat_translator\2019-summary.md
• c:\projects\cat_translator\backup\20191132134.md
• c:\projects\cat_translator\2020.md.jpg

Ignoring folders only in the base directory

/zipfiles

This excludes

• c:\projects\cat_translator\zipfiles\

This allows

• c:\projects\cat_translator\images\zipfiles

ignore everything in a specific directory, without testing deeper files

/backups/*

This excludes

• c:\projects\cat_translator\backups\another_folder a folder in backups
• c:\projects\cat_translator\backups\backup.zip a file in backups

This allows

• c:\projects\cat_translator\backups\another_folder\backup.zip

Files and folders past the first depth are allowed. This is because * does not match slashes / which means folders

data/*.zip cannot match data/archive/backup.zip

use data/**/*.zip if you want to ignore zero or more child folders of data/

Allow zips in the base directory, but ignore everywhere else

/*/*.zip

This excludes

• c:\projects\cat_translator\images\backup.zip
• c:\projects\cat_translator\logs\2020\backup.zip

This allows

• c:\projects\cat_translator\backup.zip

references

• .gitignore syntax : official docs