Documentation/git-check-ignore.txt

   1 git-check-ignore(1)
   2 ===================
   3
   4 NAME
   5 ----
   6 git-check-ignore - Debug gitignore / exclude files
   7
   8
   9 SYNOPSIS
  10 --------
  11 [verse]
  12 'git check-ignore' [options] pathname...
  13 'git check-ignore' [options] --stdin < <list-of-paths>
  14
  15 DESCRIPTION
  16 -----------
  17
  18 For each pathname given via the command-line or from a file via
  19 `--stdin`, show the pattern from .gitignore (or other input files to
  20 the exclude mechanism) that decides if the pathname is excluded or
  21 included.  Later patterns within a file take precedence over earlier
  22 ones.
  23
  24 OPTIONS
  25 -------
  26 -q, --quiet::
  27         Don't output anything, just set exit status.  This is only
  28         valid with a single pathname.
  29
  30 -v, --verbose::
  31         Also output details about the matching pattern (if any)
  32         for each given pathname.
  33
  34 --stdin::
  35         Read file names from stdin instead of from the command-line.
  36
  37 -z::
  38         The output format is modified to be machine-parseable (see
  39         below).  If `--stdin` is also given, input paths are separated
  40         with a NUL character instead of a linefeed character.
  41
  42 -n, --non-matching::
  43         Show given paths which don't match any pattern.  This only
  44         makes sense when `--verbose` is enabled, otherwise it would
  45         not be possible to distinguish between paths which match a
  46         pattern and those which don't.
  47
  48 OUTPUT
  49 ------
  50
  51 By default, any of the given pathnames which match an ignore pattern
  52 will be output, one per line.  If no pattern matches a given path,
  53 nothing will be output for that path; this means that path will not be
  54 ignored.
  55
  56 If `--verbose` is specified, the output is a series of lines of the form:
  57
  58 <source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname>
  59
  60 <pathname> is the path of a file being queried, <pattern> is the
  61 matching pattern, <source> is the pattern's source file, and <linenum>
  62 is the line number of the pattern within that source.  If the pattern
  63 contained a `!` prefix or `/` suffix, it will be preserved in the
  64 output.  <source> will be an absolute path when referring to the file
  65 configured by `core.excludesfile`, or relative to the repository root
  66 when referring to `.git/info/exclude` or a per-directory exclude file.
  67
  68 If `-z` is specified, the pathnames in the output are delimited by the
  69 null character; if `--verbose` is also specified then null characters
  70 are also used instead of colons and hard tabs:
  71
  72 <source> <NULL> <linenum> <NULL> <pattern> <NULL> <pathname> <NULL>
  73
  74 If `-n` or `--non-matching` are specified, non-matching pathnames will
  75 also be output, in which case all fields in each output record except
  76 for <pathname> will be empty.  This can be useful when running
  77 non-interactively, so that files can be incrementally streamed to
  78 STDIN of a long-running check-ignore process, and for each of these
  79 files, STDOUT will indicate whether that file matched a pattern or
  80 not.  (Without this option, it would be impossible to tell whether the
  81 absence of output for a given file meant that it didn't match any
  82 pattern, or that the output hadn't been generated yet.)
  83
  84 Buffering happens as documented under the `GIT_FLUSH` option in
  85 linkgit:git[1].  The caller is responsible for avoiding deadlocks
  86 caused by overfilling an input buffer or reading from an empty output
  87 buffer.
  88
  89 EXIT STATUS
  90 -----------
  91
  92 0::
  93         One or more of the provided paths is ignored.
  94
  95 1::
  96         None of the provided paths are ignored.
  97
  98 128::
  99         A fatal error was encountered.
 100
 101 SEE ALSO
 102 --------
 103 linkgit:gitignore[5]
 104 linkgit:gitconfig[5]
 105 linkgit:git-ls-files[1]
 106
 107 GIT
 108 ---
 109 Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite