Is there a way to use extended regular expressions(ERE) in a .gitignore file? For example I want to use the + repetition character in a .gitignore file. Is there a way to do that?
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Jacob Krieg
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As illustrated here and detailed in "this question", the function fnmatch() is involved to interpret glob patterns, which means regular expressions are not supported.
This is what gitignore man page mentions:
Otherwise,
git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for consumption by fnmatch(3)with theFNM_PATHNAMEflag: wildcards in the pattern will not match a/in the pathname.
For example, "Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".
You can see some correspondence between glob patterns and regular expressions in those questions.
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The .gitignore (and other) files use filename globs, not regular expressions.
I very much doubt you can convince the git hackers to change that: Just too ingrained by now, and globs are much more familiar as filename matchers.
vonbrand
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13That's a pity. Such a handy feature could it be. – Artur Barseghyan Apr 17 '14 at 08:02
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3@ArturBarseghyan, consider Mercurial, it has that neat feature and many other cool features too. – toriningen Apr 04 '15 at 20:46
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@modchan: I know it exists in Mercurial and I use it a lot. Thanks for the comment anyway. – Artur Barseghyan Apr 07 '15 at 14:29
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2Has someone tried submitting a patch? Who knows, perhaps the git hackers would also find this useful. – Alexander Jan 03 '18 at 10:18