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12-pathspec.md

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Up | Content | Intro | Concepts | Operations | Dictionary

Pathspec

  • A pathspec is a pattern used to match a path or a set of paths
  • A path is a file or a directory
  • A pattern can be a combination of names, wildcards and signatures
  • Signatures are special words used to control the matching process

Files and directories

git add .               # Add current working directory
git add src/            # Add src/ directory  
git add src/ header/    # Add multiples paths

Wildcards

The asterics (*) wildcard character matches any number of characters.

git log '*.py'      # Show history of all python files
git log '.*'        # Show history of all files and directories
git log 'qa*.py'    # Show history of all python files starting with qa

The question mark (?) can be used to match a single symbol.

git ls-files '*.mp?'    # Files with 3 symbols and first two are 'mp'

The brackets [ ] can be used to match a single character out of a set.

git ls-files '*.mp[34]'  # Match exactly mp3 and mp4 files

Magic signatures

Magic signatures are special words provided by git to control the result of the matching process.

# Syntax
:(signature)pattern

# Signatures
top (/), exclude (!), icase, literal, glob, attr
  
# Examples
':/*.mp3'               # All mp3 files starting form the repo root 
':!*.md'                # Everything except md files
':(icase)*.jpg'         # Both lower and upper case for jpg
':(literal)Maybe?.mp3'  # File Maybe?.mp3 with ? in the name
':(attrib:!debug)*'     # All paths not having the attribute debug
':(top,icase)*.mp?'     # Combination of signatures

top

Match the pattern from the root of the git repository rather than the current working directory.

exclude

First resolve other patterns and then use exclude to remove a set of paths from the result.

icase

Ignore case when matching.

literal

Treat all the characters literally. Useful to use wildcards as letters rather than wildcard symbols.

glob

Unix like matching when using the asterics (*) wildcard characters. In this case glob will change the matching behavior as follows:

  • (*) will not match through directories
  • (**) will match through directories

attr

Match folders using git attributes. Depending on the usecase git offers two locations to define attributes:

  • .gitattribures (tracked)
  • .git/info/attributes (untracked)

Commands accepting pathspecs

  • add
  • log
  • checkout
  • clean
  • diff
  • grep
  • ls-files
  • rm