git: How do I recursively add all files in a directory subtree that match a glob pattern?

Question

I have several .screen files inside /xxx/documentation and its subdirectories that are already tracked by Git.

After modifying many of these screen files, I run git add documentation/\\*.screen—as indicated by the first example in git-add's documentation—to stage these files, but the command fails:

fatal: pathspec 'documentation/\*.screen' did not match any files

Is my command bad, or does git have a bug?

The marked answer worked for me, however it should be noted that every wildcard needs to be put in quotes separately, i.e. `git add ' *.cpp *.h'` resulted in the above error `fatal: pathspec ' *.cpp *.h' did not match any files` while `git add ' *.cpp' '*.h'` did its job. — mirtan, Jun 15 '18 at 11:12

Greg Bacon · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-16T21:13:16.813

61

It's a bug in the documentation. Quote the asterisk with

$ git add documentation/\*.screen

or

$ git add 'documentation/*.screen'

to get the behavior you want.

If instead you want to add files in the current directory only, use

$ git add *.screen

UPDATE: I submitted a patch that corrects the issue, now fixed as of version 1.6.6.2.

edited Feb 16 '14 at 21:13

answered Feb 08 '10 at 16:18

Greg Bacon

134,834
32
188
245

Are these two commands lead to the same result? What about only add files in the current directory but not its sub-directories? – Phương Nguyễn Feb 08 '10 at 16:27
By the way, kubi mentioned that the command worked fine on his machine, what do you say? – Phương Nguyễn Feb 08 '10 at 16:36
@Phuong Yes, the two commands lead to the same result. To add files in the current directory only, don't quote the argument, (for example, git add *.screen). I believe kubi and Aaron misunderstood your question because I was surprised to learn (thanks for prompting me!) that git-add has this feature. – Greg Bacon Feb 08 '10 at 16:49
@alex I'm curious to know the specifics of your situation that caused it to fail. It sounds like the context is different enough to warrant a separate question that I look forward to reading! – Greg Bacon Jan 14 '12 at 12:08

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 23 '11 at 09:28

17

I've tried the accepted answer, but it didn't worked for me.. so here's mine just in case someone wants to get it's job done without spending time in dissecting various aspects that might cause the problem:

find documentation -name "*.screen" | xargs git add -u

//the -u option to git-add adds to index just the files that were previously tracked and modified

answered Jun 23 '11 at 09:28

Flueras Bogdan

9,187
8
32
30

In your case, is `documentation` the name of a directory inside the repo's working tree or a relative path from outside the working tree to the repo's toplevel? – Greg Bacon Jan 14 '12 at 12:11

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '10 at 12:20

4

You told the shell to look for *.screen (i.e. exactly this string - which doesn't exist - instead of what you want "all files that end with .screen). Omit the \\ so the shell can do the file name expansion for you.

answered Feb 08 '10 at 12:20

Aaron Digulla

321,842
108
597
820

In this manual, they told me to add the double backslashes http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-add.html. What do you say? – Phương Nguyễn Feb 08 '10 at 13:39
I've read the example and I understand what they want to do (recursive add) but then, why does the command fail? The error suggest that either there is no file with the extension ".screen" in the directory or that the pattern doesn't get expanded. – Aaron Digulla Feb 08 '10 at 14:13
Well, that's weird, because when I remove the double back-slashes then the command produce no error. – Phương Nguyễn Feb 08 '10 at 16:18

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 18 '16 at 20:29

This what I just used for a similar problem of git adding all the files in a directory:

find . | sed "s/\(.*\)/\"\1\"/g" | xargs git add

For the original question the command would be:

find -name "*.screen" | sed "s/\(.*\)/\"\1\"/g" | xargs git add

Note that I'm dealing with the case where a fully specified file name contains spaces. Thats why my answer. Edit the portion before the first | in order to pick out different files to add.

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 19 '13 at 19:23

3

git add *.java works for me to add recursively all the java files

answered Nov 19 '13 at 19:23

Jackie

39
1

1

Wow, it works for me, too! But only if there are no `.java` files in the current directory. If there are, only those files are added. – Robin Green Nov 19 '13 at 19:46

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 08 '10 at 12:20

1

try

git add ./documentation/*.screen

answered Feb 08 '10 at 12:20

kubi

48,104
19
94
118

Isn't it the command only add file from ./documentation, not from its sub-directories? – Phương Nguyễn Feb 08 '10 at 13:39
You're right. I just tried your original command on my machine and it worked fine, though. – kubi Feb 08 '10 at 14:14

git: How do I recursively add all files in a directory subtree that match a glob pattern?

6 Answers6

Linked