Showing and cleaning ignored files

Ignoring files is useful to filter noise from the output of git status. But, sometimes it is required to check which files are ignored. This example will show you how to do that.

Getting ready

We'll continue in the repository from the last example.

How to do it...

To show the files we have ignored, we can use the clean command. Normally, the clean command will remove the untracked files from the working directory but it is possible to run this in a dry-run mode, -n, where it just shows what will happen.

$ git clean -Xnd
Would remove bin/foobar
Would remove test.test
Would remove test.txt.bak

The options used in the preceding command specify the following:

• -n, --dry-run: Only lists that will be removed
• -X: Removes only the files ignored by Git
• -d: Removes the untracked directories in addition to the untracked files

The ignored files can also be listed with the ls-files command:

$ git ls-files -o -i --exclude-standard
bin/foobar
test.test
test.txt.bak

Where the...