.gitignore and untracked files are shown in git status

Question

I am getting wierd scenario on Centos 7.5.1804 with git 1.8.3.1. I have .gitignore as

*.pyc

but git status showing following

$ git status
# On branch master
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#   a.pyc
#   b.pyc
#   c.pyc
#   d.pyc

Also, those files have never been committed. So git status should not have shown those files. What could cause this to happen?

That's odd. I can't replicate this... I'm using centos `7.5.1804` (docker image), git-x86-64 `1.8.3.1-20.el7`. Can you make sure that there is no whitespace around `*.pyc` in the gitignore file? — evolutionxbox, Jun 15 '19 at 22:25
@evolutionxbox Awesome. You are right. It was due to whitespace only. However, I am using the same files in Ubuntu 16.04.5 with git 2.7.4 which didn't show those files. So I got confused. — Shashwat Kumar, Jun 15 '19 at 22:29

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 15 '19 at 22:32

1

This was due to a typo in the .gitignore file which had extra space after *.pyc. However, the behaviour was different on Ubuntu 16.04.5 with git 2.7.4 where the files were not listed even with extra space.

Probably this space issue has been taken cared between git 1.8.3.1 and 2.7.4.

answered Jun 15 '19 at 22:32

Shashwat Kumar

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Note that the [current documentation](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore) mentions it: `Trailing spaces are ignored unless they are quoted with backslash ("\").` – choroba Jun 16 '19 at 09:12

.gitignore and untracked files are shown in git status

1 Answers1