Documentation / git-check-ignore.txton commit Git 2.18-rc1 (3e55249)
   1git-check-ignore(1)
   2===================
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-check-ignore - Debug gitignore / exclude files
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git check-ignore' [<options>] <pathname>...
  13'git check-ignore' [<options>] --stdin
  14
  15DESCRIPTION
  16-----------
  17
  18For each pathname given via the command-line or from a file via
  19`--stdin`, check whether the file is excluded by .gitignore (or other
  20input files to the exclude mechanism) and output the path if it is
  21excluded.
  22
  23By default, tracked files are not shown at all since they are not
  24subject to exclude rules; but see `--no-index'.
  25
  26OPTIONS
  27-------
  28-q, --quiet::
  29        Don't output anything, just set exit status.  This is only
  30        valid with a single pathname.
  31
  32-v, --verbose::
  33        Also output details about the matching pattern (if any)
  34        for each given pathname. For precedence rules within and
  35        between exclude sources, see linkgit:gitignore[5].
  36
  37--stdin::
  38        Read pathnames from the standard input, one per line,
  39        instead of from the command-line.
  40
  41-z::
  42        The output format is modified to be machine-parseable (see
  43        below).  If `--stdin` is also given, input paths are separated
  44        with a NUL character instead of a linefeed character.
  45
  46-n, --non-matching::
  47        Show given paths which don't match any pattern.  This only
  48        makes sense when `--verbose` is enabled, otherwise it would
  49        not be possible to distinguish between paths which match a
  50        pattern and those which don't.
  51
  52--no-index::
  53        Don't look in the index when undertaking the checks. This can
  54        be used to debug why a path became tracked by e.g. `git add .`
  55        and was not ignored by the rules as expected by the user or when
  56        developing patterns including negation to match a path previously
  57        added with `git add -f`.
  58
  59OUTPUT
  60------
  61
  62By default, any of the given pathnames which match an ignore pattern
  63will be output, one per line.  If no pattern matches a given path,
  64nothing will be output for that path; this means that path will not be
  65ignored.
  66
  67If `--verbose` is specified, the output is a series of lines of the form:
  68
  69<source> <COLON> <linenum> <COLON> <pattern> <HT> <pathname>
  70
  71<pathname> is the path of a file being queried, <pattern> is the
  72matching pattern, <source> is the pattern's source file, and <linenum>
  73is the line number of the pattern within that source.  If the pattern
  74contained a `!` prefix or `/` suffix, it will be preserved in the
  75output.  <source> will be an absolute path when referring to the file
  76configured by `core.excludesFile`, or relative to the repository root
  77when referring to `.git/info/exclude` or a per-directory exclude file.
  78
  79If `-z` is specified, the pathnames in the output are delimited by the
  80null character; if `--verbose` is also specified then null characters
  81are also used instead of colons and hard tabs:
  82
  83<source> <NULL> <linenum> <NULL> <pattern> <NULL> <pathname> <NULL>
  84
  85If `-n` or `--non-matching` are specified, non-matching pathnames will
  86also be output, in which case all fields in each output record except
  87for <pathname> will be empty.  This can be useful when running
  88non-interactively, so that files can be incrementally streamed to
  89STDIN of a long-running check-ignore process, and for each of these
  90files, STDOUT will indicate whether that file matched a pattern or
  91not.  (Without this option, it would be impossible to tell whether the
  92absence of output for a given file meant that it didn't match any
  93pattern, or that the output hadn't been generated yet.)
  94
  95Buffering happens as documented under the `GIT_FLUSH` option in
  96linkgit:git[1].  The caller is responsible for avoiding deadlocks
  97caused by overfilling an input buffer or reading from an empty output
  98buffer.
  99
 100EXIT STATUS
 101-----------
 102
 1030::
 104        One or more of the provided paths is ignored.
 105
 1061::
 107        None of the provided paths are ignored.
 108
 109128::
 110        A fatal error was encountered.
 111
 112SEE ALSO
 113--------
 114linkgit:gitignore[5]
 115linkgit:git-config[1]
 116linkgit:git-ls-files[1]
 117
 118GIT
 119---
 120Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite