PATHS & GIT RULES
Try one root .gitignore and candidate paths. A trailing / marks a directory.
Rules and candidate strings stay in this browser; no repository is read or changed.
Enter at least one candidate path.
Paths are relative to this .gitignore directory. Use / separators; end a directory with /. Absolute paths, drive prefixes, backslashes, empty segments, . and .. are rejected. Spaces are preserved.
One root .gitignore, untracked-path simulation, case-sensitive UTF-8 byte matching. No nested files, global excludes, index state or filesystem detection.
Up to 50 physical rule lines and 200 nonempty candidate lines; 256 characters per rule, 512 per path, 32 path segments. Controls are rejected. Worker stops after 2 seconds.
Results are outdated or being calculated.
A file exception can look correct and still fail because its parent directory is ignored. This Gitignore tester makes that distinction visible: the deciding rule can belong to an ancestor, even when a later line names your file exactly.
Use this gitignore debugger with a small set of candidate paths to review a change before editing your repository. Each result distinguishes ignored, explicitly restored and unmatched paths through the deciding rule and the complete rule-prefix history.
build/ excludes the directory before Git can examine build/keep.txt. A later !build/keep.txt cannot rescue it. In contrast, cache/* leaves cache/ traversable, so !cache/keep.txt can restore that child. This Gitignore tester identifies the blocking ancestor instead of labelling every negation a successful exception.
An ignore rule, an exception and another ignore rule can change a path three times. The history records the result after every physical line, including comments and blank lines. Compare the deciding line before and after a new pattern to see whether it changed the path itself or a parent directory.
Paste paths relative to the directory containing your single .gitignore. Enter build/ for a directory and build for a file. A leading / anchors a rule, but is invalid in the candidate input. Candidate spaces are literal, so do not trim a filename just to make it match.
Expand the history under a result. If a parent is excluded, restore that directory first or exclude its children with a pattern such as cache/*. A negative child pattern cannot cross an excluded parent. The line displayed after a step is the deciding line, which may be earlier than that step.
Automatic testing waits 350 ms after an edit. Turn it off to use Test rules or Ctrl/Cmd+Enter. An edit immediately makes the report stale. Example and Clear show a preview first; Undo restores both inputs and results. JSON includes history, while TSV exports the complete path summary.
The ignore 7.0.9 engine supplies Git-style pattern matching for *, ?, bracket ranges and **. The wrapper matches UTF-8 bytes with case sensitivity, so one ? does not stand for an entire multibyte character. Brace expansion and regular-expression syntax are not extra matching modes.
Comments and empty lines keep their place in the history. For each reachable node, the last matching pattern decides whether it is excluded or restored. Duplicate positive rules therefore report the last matching line, not merely the first pattern that happened to ignore the path.
Use JSON to retain original paths, rule text and every prefix snapshot. Use TSV for a compact summary with directory status, ignored status, deciding line, pattern and blocking parent. The exported report includes all candidate rows even when only 50 are displayed; formula-like TSV cells receive a protective apostrophe.
An excluded parent prevents Git from visiting its children. A child exception cannot reopen that parent. Restore the directory first, or use a children-only pattern such as build/* and then a specific child exception. This Gitignore tester names the blocking parent alongside the deciding rule.
build can match that name at any depth; /build is anchored to the directory containing this .gitignore. A middle slash also makes a pattern relative to that base. Test both build and src/build to see the difference without changing any repository files.
No. The rule logs/ applies only to directories. Enter logs/ as a candidate directory, and logs as a candidate file. This explicit marker is necessary because the browser does not inspect a filesystem or infer a file type from the other candidates.
A leading **/ matches at any depth; a trailing /** matches descendants; a/**/b matches zero or more directories between a and b. Single * and ? do not cross /. The matcher uses UTF-8 bytes, so ? covers one byte rather than a whole multibyte character.
A tracked file stays tracked when you add it to .gitignore. This tool has no index information and evaluates candidate strings as untracked paths. Use Git in your repository to inspect the tracked state before interpreting an ignored result as a change to version control.
Found a path case worth checking?
Use the Gitignore tester with both a path that should be excluded and one that should survive. Include the parent directory itself when you are investigating a failed exception.
Keep the exported history alongside your review, then confirm the real repository with Git before changing its rules.