my .gitignore file
**/target/
**/.settings/
**/.classpath
**/.project
**/.idea/
**/*.iml
**/*.log
I dont know the meaning of the '**/' at the begining
Asked
Active
Viewed 3,112 times
6
zhiping chen
- 93
- 1
- 5
-
see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18722471/when-to-use-double-star-in-glob-syntax-within-java – Scary Wombat Aug 03 '17 at 02:51
-
1@ScaryWombat the question is about syntax of `gitignore`, not Java. – 1615903 Aug 03 '17 at 03:49
1 Answers
8
The double asterisk (**) is well documented:
Two consecutive asterisks ("
**") in patterns matched against full pathname may have special meaning:
A leading "
**" followed by a slash means match in all directories. For example, "**/foo" matches file or directory "foo" anywhere, the same as pattern "foo". "**/foo/bar" matches file or directory "bar" anywhere that is directly under directory "foo".A trailing "
/**" matches everything inside. For example, "abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative to the location of the.gitignorefile, with infinite depth.A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash matches zero or more directories. For example, "
a/**/b" matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.
Your case matches the first one, so this line: **/.idea/ means: ignore .idea directory in any directory within the repository. So it would match /.idea/, /foo/.idea/, /foo/bar/.idea/ etc.
1615903
- 32,635
- 12
- 70
- 99