.gitignore not ignoring files

Question

Here is my .gitignore file:

# See https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files for more about ignoring files.
#
# If you find yourself ignoring temporary files generated by your text editor
# or operating system, you probably want to add a global ignore instead:
#   git config --global core.excludesfile '~/.gitignore_global'

# Ignore bundler config.
/.bundle

# Ignore the default SQLite database.
/db/*.sqlite3
/db/*.sqlite3-journal

# Ignore all logfiles and tempfiles.
/log/*
!/log/.keep
/tmp

# Ignore application configuration
/config/application.yml
/config/application.yml.bak
*.bak

Now, my repository is at https://github.com/rmohan80/learn-rails

Why would my latest commit -- "add configuration for email" add Readme.rdoc.bak but ignore .gitignore.bak

Any clues?

Answer 1

The star character does do match files beginning with a period. You can add .*.bak to ignore them in your case or you can change the glob option in your shell :

# capture dot file
shopt -s dotglob

# do git stuff here

# stop capturing dot file
shopt -u dotglob

A similar problem solved here : https://stackoverflow.com/a/19365350

Answer 2

You have to checkout the HEAD, so that your repository looks unmodified. Then run the following:

$ echo '*.*.bak' >> .gitignore

To exclude files that are formatted like README.md.bak .

And run

$ echo '**/*.bak' >> .gitignore

to exclude files that are formatted like README.bak anywhere in the tree below the current directory.

Having .bak.bak files is something you don't want.