What it means **/node_modules/* in tsconfig.json?

Question

In this official docs of Visual Code it's recommended to add node_modules to the exclude field of tsconfig.json. It is done this way:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowJs": true,
    "checkJs": true
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules", "**/node_modules/*"]
}

I wonder why **/node_modules/* is needed if I'm already adding the plain node_modules folder.

Answer 1

**/node_modules/* is a glob pattern meaning (from right to left) "anything under a node_modules directory at any depth ". See the glob module for more details, it's highly likely it's the module used to interpret that pattern.

From their docs:

• * Matches 0 or more characters in a single path portion
• ** If a "globstar" is alone in a path portion, then it matches zero or more directories and subdirectories searching for matches. It does not crawl symlinked directories.