git rm * doesn't remove all files in one go

Question

I was trying out some sample instructions of git and came across this peculiar case that when we do a git rm *, it doesn\'t delete the .* files in

Answer 1

Note that the right syntax should be git rm -r . ('dot')

More worrying is git rm -r (empty pathspec string) which does the same until Git 2.11!

See commit d426430 (22 Jun 2016) by Emily Xie (emilyxxie).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 3b1e135, 26 Oct 2016)}

pathspec: warn on empty strings as pathspec

An empty string as a pathspec element matches all paths.
A buggy script, however, could accidentally assign an empty string to a variable that then gets passed to a Git command invocation, e.g.:

path=... compute a path to be removed in $path ...
git rm -r "$paht"

which would unintentionally remove all paths in the current directory.

The fix for this issue requires a two-step approach.

• As there may be existing scripts that knowingly use empty strings in this manner, the first step simply gives a warning that (1) tells that an empty string will become an invalid pathspec element and (2) asks the user to use "." if they mean to match all.

• For step two, a follow-up patch several release cycles later will remove the warning and throw an error instead.

---

Update for Git 2.15.x/2.16 (Q1 2018):

The message "will be made invalid in upcoming releases" disappear, and becomes:

empty string is not a valid pathspec.
please use . instead if you meant to match all paths

See commit 9e4e8a6 (07 Jun 2017) by Emily Xie (emilyxxie).
See commit 229a95a (23 Jun 2017) by Junio C Hamano (gitster).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 728c573, 06 Nov 2017)}

An empty string as a pathspec element matches all paths.
A buggy script, however, could accidentally assign an empty string to a variable that then gets passed to a Git command invocation, e.g.:

path=... compute a path to be removed in $path ...
git rm -r "$path"

which would unintentionally remove all paths in the current directory.