Re: Missing ? wildcard character in gitignore documentation

[Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 10:47:10AM -0500, Randall S. Becker wrote:
> The implication of support for ? is there through the following paragraph from the gitignore documentation:
> 
>     "Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for
>     consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag: wildcards
>     in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname. For example,
>     "Documentation/*.html" matches "Documentation/git.html" but not
>     "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html" or
>     "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html"."
> 
> Of course you have to go read fnmatch(3), so it might be good for
> expand on this here :).

I agree. How about something like this?

-- 8< --
Subject: [PATCH] gitignore.txt: elaborate shell glob syntax

`fnmatch(3)` is a great mention if the intended audience is
programmers. For normal users it's probably better to spell out what
a shell glob is.

This paragraph is updated to roughly tell (or remind) what the main
wildcards are supposed to do. All the details are still hidden away
behind the `fnmatch(3)` wall because bringing the whole specification
here may be too much.

Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
---
 Documentation/gitignore.txt | 11 +++++------
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index 63260f0056..0f4b1360bd 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -102,12 +102,11 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
    (relative to the toplevel of the work tree if not from a
    `.gitignore` file).
 
- - Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable
-   for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag:
-   wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname.
-   For example, "Documentation/{asterisk}.html" matches
-   "Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html"
-   or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".
+ - Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob: '{asterisk}'
+   matches anything except '/', '?' matches any one character except
+   '/' and '[]' matches one character in a selected range. See
+   fnmatch(3) and the FNM_PATHNAME flag for a more accurate
+   description.
 
  - A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname.
    For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
-- 
2.16.1.205.g271f633410

-- 8< --