GIT-CHECK-IGNORE(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECK-IGNORE(1)
NAME
git-check-ignore - Debug gitignore / exclude files
SYNOPSIS
git check-ignore [options] pathname...
git check-ignore [options] --stdin < <list-of-paths>
DESCRIPTION
For each pathname given via the command-line or from a file via --stdin, show the pattern from .gitignore (or other input files to the
exclude mechanism) that decides if the pathname is excluded or included. Later patterns within a file take precedence over earlier ones.
OPTIONS
-q, --quiet
Don't output anything, just set exit status. This is only valid with a single pathname.
-v, --verbose
Also output details about the matching pattern (if any) for each given pathname.
--stdin
Read file names from stdin instead of from the command-line.
-z
The output format is modified to be machine-parseable (see below). If --stdin is also given, input paths are separated with a NUL
character instead of a linefeed character.
-n, --non-matching
Show given paths which don't match any pattern. This only makes sense when --verbose is enabled, otherwise it would not be possible to
distinguish between paths which match a pattern and those which don't.
--no-index
Don't look in the index when undertaking the checks. This can be used to debug why a path became tracked by e.g. git add . and was
not ignored by the rules as expected by the user or when developing patterns including negation to match a path previously added with
git add -f.
OUTPUT
By default, any of the given pathnames which match an ignore pattern will be output, one per line. If no pattern matches a given path,
nothing will be output for that path; this means that path will not be ignored.
If --verbose is specified, the output is a series of lines of the form:
<source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname>
<pathname> is the path of a file being queried, <pattern> is the matching pattern, <source> is the pattern's source file, and <linenum> is
the line number of the pattern within that source. If the pattern contained a ! prefix or / suffix, it will be preserved in the output.
<source> will be an absolute path when referring to the file configured by core.excludesfile, or relative to the repository root when
referring to .git/info/exclude or a per-directory exclude file.
If -z is specified, the pathnames in the output are delimited by the null character; if --verbose is also specified then null characters
are also used instead of colons and hard tabs:
<source> <NULL> <linenum> <NULL> <pattern> <NULL> <pathname> <NULL>
If -n or --non-matching are specified, non-matching pathnames will also be output, in which case all fields in each output record except
for <pathname> will be empty. This can be useful when running non-interactively, so that files can be incrementally streamed to STDIN of a
long-running check-ignore process, and for each of these files, STDOUT will indicate whether that file matched a pattern or not. (Without
this option, it would be impossible to tell whether the absence of output for a given file meant that it didn't match any pattern, or that
the output hadn't been generated yet.)
Buffering happens as documented under the GIT_FLUSH option in git(1). The caller is responsible for avoiding deadlocks caused by
overfilling an input buffer or reading from an empty output buffer.
EXIT STATUS
0
One or more of the provided paths is ignored.
1
None of the provided paths are ignored.
128
A fatal error was encountered.
SEE ALSO
gitignore(5) gitconfig(5) git-ls-files(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 1.8.5.3 01/14/2014 GIT-CHECK-IGNORE(1)