Learn Git in a Day

Pattern Matching in a Nutshell

The .gitignore file uses simple patterns to match filenames and paths. Here are the most common ones:

A filename like *.pyc matches any file ending in .pyc, anywhere in the project. The * is a wildcard that means "anything".

A folder like __pycache__/ matches the folder and everything inside it. The trailing / tells Git this is a folder, not a file.

A specific file like .env matches exactly that filename in the project root.

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