On Wed, 29 Apr 2015, Richard Guy Briggs wrote: > On 15/04/29, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > On Wed, 29 Apr 2015, Richard Guy Briggs wrote: > > > > > On 15/04/29, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > > > next question -- a pattern will apply to *any* file type (file or > > > > directory), unless suffixed with a slash, whereupon it will apply only > > > > to a directory, yes? this would appear to be the case since the kernel > > > > .gitignore contains the following lines: > > > > > > > > /vmlinux > > > > /System.map > > > > ... > > > > /debian/ > > > > /tar-install/ > > > > > > I assume the "/" prefix anchors it in the root of the git tree... > > > > well, that was one of the confusing bits as i mentioned earlier ... > > what does it mean if it shows up in a lower-level .gitignore. the man > > page states thusly: > > > > A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. For example, > > "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c". > > > > but if it's in a subdirectory, does it mean the pathname relative to > > that subdirectory? the man page doesn't make that clear. > > I would have assumed relative to the subdirectory, so the arch > example you presented earlier, both would match. i would have assumed the same but, i swear, that situation is not addressed clearly in the man page. one would think this interpretation would be the correct one since it's so *obviously* the most useful interpretation, and i would have expected to see it used frequently in the kernel source tree. oddly, in all of the kernel .gitignore files, that occurs only once in tools/thermal/tmon/.gitignore, whose entire contents are: /tmon which represents the executable generated by building that tool, so that makes perfect sense, but sure doesn't explain why there is not a single other occurrence of that structure anywhere in the tree. weird. the more i read the man page, the confuseder i get. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================