What does the four horizontal lines symbol mean in vs code and does it mean my gitignore is not setup?

Question

When you create a new file without an extension in VS Code you get four horizontal lines stacked on top of one another; the bottom and the third one up is shorter than the others. What type of file is this? And when I setup a react-app, the.gitignore has the four-line icon by it instead of the git logo. Does this mean my gitignore isn't working? and if so, what can I do about this?

Answer 1

If you mean this symbol:

The icons next to filenames indicate what sort of file VSCode thinks they are. JavaScript files show JS, JSX files show the React symbol, and so on.

The lines icon mentioned in your question looks to just be the default icon for any file extension VSCode doesn't recognize - it also occurs for text files (which is what the icon looks to represent) and files that end in the nonsense extension .foobar , for example.

It's only an icon - if you've set up your Git repository properly (or run something that sets one up for you), the icon that VSCode chooses will not affect your app.