Thanks, but are you sure about that? I haven't checked, but I seem to recall that if there is a slash anywhere in the pattern, git starts anchoring it to the top of the project. It would be nice to double check this first.

Yes I'm sure. /build would match a file or directory at the root, while
build/ would match a directory at any level. //build/ would match a
directory at the second level while /*/build/ would match a directory at
any level, which is essentially the same as build/.

Pertinent excerpts from the gitignore manpage:

If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the purpose of the following description, but it would only find a match with a directory. In other words, foo/ will match a directory foo and paths underneath it, but will not match a regular file or a symbolic link foo (this is consistent with the way how pathspec works in general in Git).

...

A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname. For example, "/*.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

If you're still in doubt, you could check it yourself. :)

@arcresu any updates on this? I've already quoted the pertinent excerpts from the gitignore manpage; all info needed is there. And as I said before, this is really easy to test. Just create a new Git repo, add a bunch of "build" directories on different levels, and observe how each pattern works.

Sorry for the delay - I haven't had much time to process PRs here lately. Yes, you're right about this rule. Thanks for confirming, I just couldn't quite remember how it worked. 🎉