Each line in `gitattributes` file is of form:
- glob attr1 attr2 ...
+ pattern attr1 attr2 ...
-That is, a glob pattern followed by an attributes list,
-separated by whitespaces. When the glob pattern matches the
+That is, a pattern followed by an attributes list,
+separated by whitespaces. When the pattern matches the
path in question, the attributes listed on the line are given to
the path.
Unspecified::
- No glob pattern matches the path, and nothing says if
+ No pattern matches the path, and nothing says if
the path has or does not have the attribute, the
attribute for the path is said to be Unspecified.
-When more than one glob pattern matches the path, a later line
+When more than one pattern matches the path, a later line
overrides an earlier line. This overriding is done per
-attribute.
+attribute. The rules how the pattern matches paths are the
+same as in `.gitignore` files; see linkgit:gitignore[5].
When deciding what attributes are assigned to a path, git
consults `$GIT_DIR/info/attributes` file (which has the highest
precedence), `.gitattributes` file in the same directory as the
-path in question, and its parent directories (the further the
-directory that contains `.gitattributes` is from the path in
-question, the lower its precedence).
+path in question, and its parent directories up to the toplevel of the
+work tree (the further the directory that contains `.gitattributes`
+is from the path in question, the lower its precedence).
If you wish to affect only a single repository (i.e., to assign
attributes to files that are particular to one user's workflow), then
- `bibtex` suitable for files with BibTeX coded references.
+- `cpp` suitable for source code in the C and C++ languages.
+
- `html` suitable for HTML/XHTML documents.
- `java` suitable for source code in the Java language.
- `tex` suitable for source code for LaTeX documents.
+Customizing word diff
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+You can customize the rules that `git diff --color-words` uses to
+split words in a line, by specifying an appropriate regular expression
+in the "diff.*.wordRegex" configuration variable. For example, in TeX
+a backslash followed by a sequence of letters forms a command, but
+several such commands can be run together without intervening
+whitespace. To separate them, use a regular expression such as
+
+------------------------
+[diff "tex"]
+ wordRegex = "\\\\[a-zA-Z]+|[{}]|\\\\.|[^\\{}[:space:]]+"
+------------------------
+
+A built-in pattern is provided for all languages listed in the
+previous section.
+
+
Performing text diffs of binary files
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^