Hi Philip

On 04.06.19 14:34, Philip Oakley wrote:

I think the rules end up being difficult because we describe them from a 
coders implementation viewpoint, rather than a users descriptive 
viewpoint. Thus we avoided things like the difficult to code slashes in 
the front/middle, and we get caught on the equivalent of neither/nor 
phrases, which can even be difficult for native English speakers.

Later on there is a recursively/respectively issue (latter not 
explicitly mentioned).  There is also an "Except if" not-a-proper 
sentence. (mentioned off-line)

After sleeping on it, I came up with:

    The slash '/' is used as the directory separator. Separators may
    occur at the beginning, middle or end of the .gitignore search pattern.

    If there is a separator at the beginning or middle (or both) of the
    pattern, then the pattern is relative to the directory level of the
    particular .gitignore file itself. Otherwise the pattern may also
    match at any level below the .gitignore level.

    If there is a separator at the end of the pattern then the pattern
    will only match directories, otherwise the pattern can match both
    files and directories.

    Examples text..

    The special '*' ...

    The special '**' ...

I am really happy about this improvement (or rather this new creation). 
In my opinion it is really easy to understand now, and it solves a ton 
of other issues we had with the preceding proposals.

I will create a new patch.

All the best,
Adam