Is there any plans to add character escaping in ignore patterns in windows?

[ruifortes]

This would be great.

[calmh]

This would be relevant only for [ and ] right? What would we a good escape character?

[calmh]

To be most windows compatible it seems we should simply disable []-patterns:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490639.aspx

[ruifortes]

Unfortunately I started using an exclamation point to mark files (or folders) that I don't need to synchronize because it is less likely to be found.
In .gitignore I just use \!*
Any way to do this in .stignore?

[calmh]

Hmm. .gitignore seems to not process paths with backslashes in them, requiring Windows users to always use forward slash and thus leaving backslash as an escape character. I'm not sure we can do the same.

[ruifortes]

why not?

[Ferroin]

Backwards compatibility would be my guess.

IOW, it was done wrong in the first place, and thus can't be changed because it will potentially break things for existing users.

[calmh]

You could say that. I'd argue that letting the user use the native form of directory separator is the right way to do things, as the opposite is confusing to a user who doesn't think Unixly. Git gets away with doing it that way because fuck Windows, right? :) (Not my opinion, but the way Git was developed for quite a few years...)

That said, the current way we do it certainly leaves something to be desired.

[Ferroin]

Just to clarify, I'm not saying it was done wrong because of the use \ on Windows as a path separator (that was Microsoft's mistake, not Syncthing's) in ignore patterns, but because there's no escape character at all on Windows. Because of that, repurposing any character as an escape character for Windows runs the risk of breaking existing users.

[ruifortes]

I vote shiming microsoft :-)
Couldn't you just add an optin configuration?

[calmh]

What is he desired functionality here? Spec it out, someone, please.

[ruifortes]

Someone tried this PR in minimatch adding the options 'allowWindowsEscape' although it wasn't merged.
What do you think is the use case preventing this PR?

[calmh]

So...

• Asterisk and question mark are not allowed in file names in Windows so are a non issue
• Exclamation point is only relevant when it's the first character, so if you want to ignore the file !Skipme you can match it by /!Skipme or **/!Skipme depending on what depth it's at
• Square brackets are trickier but can in a pinch be matched by ? instead

So I think there exists workarounds as is? Enabling backslash-escaping by requiring the use of forward slash seems like just a workaround as well to me, as backslash is the directory separator on Windows. We could invent something different and special like using | as an escape character, but really... :/

[ruifortes]

I don't understand. Can I already use **/!Skipme on windows?

[calmh]

Sure.

[ruifortes]

should **/!/!* ignore all files (and folders) starting with !!
It doesn't seem to be working