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 --no-index::
  49         Don't look in the index when undertaking the checks. This can
  50         be used to debug why a path became tracked by e.g. `git add .`
  51         and was not ignored by the rules as expected by the user or when
  52         developing patterns including negation to match a path previously
  53         added with `git add -f`.
  54
  55 OUTPUT
  56 ------
  57
  58 By default, any of the given pathnames which match an ignore pattern
  59 will be output, one per line.  If no pattern matches a given path,
  60 nothing will be output for that path; this means that path will not be
  61 ignored.
  62
  63 If `--verbose` is specified, the output is a series of lines of the form:
  64
  65 <source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname>
  66
  67 <pathname> is the path of a file being queried, <pattern> is the
  68 matching pattern, <source> is the pattern's source file, and <linenum>
  69 is the line number of the pattern within that source.  If the pattern
  70 contained a `!` prefix or `/` suffix, it will be preserved in the
  71 output.  <source> will be an absolute path when referring to the file
  72 configured by `core.excludesfile`, or relative to the repository root
  73 when referring to `.git/info/exclude` or a per-directory exclude file.
  74
  75 If `-z` is specified, the pathnames in the output are delimited by the
  76 null character; if `--verbose` is also specified then null characters
  77 are also used instead of colons and hard tabs:
  78
  79 <source> <NULL> <linenum> <NULL> <pattern> <NULL> <pathname> <NULL>
  80
  81 If `-n` or `--non-matching` are specified, non-matching pathnames will
  82 also be output, in which case all fields in each output record except
  83 for <pathname> will be empty.  This can be useful when running
  84 non-interactively, so that files can be incrementally streamed to
  85 STDIN of a long-running check-ignore process, and for each of these
  86 files, STDOUT will indicate whether that file matched a pattern or
  87 not.  (Without this option, it would be impossible to tell whether the
  88 absence of output for a given file meant that it didn't match any
  89 pattern, or that the output hadn't been generated yet.)
  90
  91 Buffering happens as documented under the `GIT_FLUSH` option in
  92 linkgit:git[1].  The caller is responsible for avoiding deadlocks
  93 caused by overfilling an input buffer or reading from an empty output
  94 buffer.
  95
  96 EXIT STATUS
  97 -----------
  98
  99 0::
 100         One or more of the provided paths is ignored.
 101
 102 1::
 103         None of the provided paths are ignored.
 104
 105 128::
 106         A fatal error was encountered.
 107
 108 SEE ALSO
 109 --------
 110 linkgit:gitignore[5]
 111 linkgit:gitconfig[5]
 112 linkgit:git-ls-files[1]
 113
 114 GIT
 115 ---
 116 Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite