* Patterns read from the file specified by the configuration
variable 'core.excludesfile'.
+Which file to place a pattern in depends on how the pattern is meant to
+be used. Patterns which should be version-controlled and distributed to
+other repositories via clone (i.e., files that all developers will want
+to ignore) should go into a `.gitignore` file. Patterns which are
+specific to a particular repository but which do not need to be shared
+with other related repositories (e.g., auxiliary files that live inside
+the repository but are specific to one user's workflow) should go into
+the `$GIT_DIR/info/exclude` file. Patterns which a user wants git to
+ignore in all situations (e.g., backup or temporary files generated by
+the user's editor of choice) generally go into a file specified by
+`core.excludesfile` in the user's `~/.gitconfig`.
+
The underlying git plumbing tools, such as
linkgit:git-ls-files[1] and linkgit:git-read-tree[1], read
`gitignore` patterns specified by command-line options, or from
included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will
override lower precedence patterns sources.
+ - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the
+ purpose of the following description, but it would only find
+ a match with a directory. In other words, `foo/` will match a
+ directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a
+ regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent
+ with the way how pathspec works in general in git).
+
- If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as
a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the
pathname without leading directories.