.gitignore regex for emacs temporary files

Question

I'm trying to .gitignore emacs temporary/autosave files. I'm using...

\.\#.*

in my .gitignore.

But git add -A run in a subfolder is still giving me:

#       new file:   .#make_collections.py
#       new file:   .#norm_collections.py
#       new file:   make_collections.py
#       new file:   norm_collections.py

even though

\.\#.*

is clearly getting the right file names and not the wrong ones when I test it with a regex tester.

Answer 1

gitignore doesn't use regular expressions. Instead it uses shell glob patters. The man page tells you two things important for this situation:

Otherwise, Git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable for
consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag.

and

A line starting with # serves as a comment. Put a backslash ("\")
in front of the first hash for patterns that begin with a hash.

This means that the pattern you want to use is simply .#*.

Now the second pattern that matov mentioned, #*, doesn't do anything as it is treated as a comment by git. Hence me quoting that second sentence from the man page.

Answer 2

Emacs autosave files are ignored with

\#*#

Answer 3

If you want an easy way to ignore files, you can also use http://www.gitignore.io which helps create useful .gitignore files for your project.

Here is the emacs template: https://www.gitignore.io/api/emacs

There is also documentation demonstrating how to run gi from the command line.

Answer 4

files are ignored with:

\#*\# .\#*

Answer 5

You can also instruct emacs to save the autosave files in a different directory altogether by setting the variable auto-save-file-name-transforms, I have this in my init file

(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms
          `((".*" ,(concat user-emacs-directory "auto-save/") t))) 

This instructs emacs to store the auto-saves inside the auto-save folder in the user-emacs-directory (usually ~/.emacs.d).

To save backup files in a different directory set the variable backup-directory-alist, the following will save backup files inside backups folder in the user-emacs-directory

(setq backup-directory-alist
      `(("." . ,(expand-file-name
                 (concat user-emacs-directory "backups")))))