Difference in the paths in .gitignore file?

Question

I've been using git but still having confusion about the .gitignore file paths.

So, what is the difference between the following two paths in .gitignore file?

tmp/*
public/documents/**/*

I can understand that tmp/* will ignore all the files and folders inside it. Am I right? But what does that second line path mean?

Answer 1

This depends on the behavior of your shell. Git doesn't do any work to determine how to expand these. In general, * matches any single file or folder:

/a/*/z
 matches        /a/b/z
 matches        /a/c/z
 doesn't match  /a/b/c/z

** matches any string of folders:

/a/**/z
 matches        /a/b/z
 matches        /a/b/c/z
 matches        /a/b/c/d/e/f/g/h/i/z
 doesn't match  /a/b/c/z/d.pr0n

Combine ** with * to match files in an entire folder tree:

/a/**/z/*.pr0n
 matches        /a/b/c/z/d.pr0n
 matches        /a/b/z/foo.pr0n
 doesn't match  /a/b/z/bar.txt