是否存在任何不能用没有星号的等效物替换的用法？
Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched against full
pathname may have special meaning:
A leading "**" followed by a slash means match in all directories.
For example, "**/foo" matches file or directory "foo" anywhere,
the same as pattern "foo". "**/foo/bar" matches file or directory
"bar" anywhere that is directly under directory "foo".
A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example, "abc/**"
matches all files inside directory "abc", relative to the location
of the .gitignore file, with infinite depth.
A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash matches
zero or more directories. For example, "a/**/b" matches "a/b",
"a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on.
Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.
https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore#_pattern_format
让我指出，我只询问领先的星号/斜线冗余。因为看起来任何**/foo/bar都可以被简单的foo/bar取代
例如，我在.gitignore文件中有以下内容：
# NuGet Packages
# The packages folder can be ignored because of Package Restore
**/packages/*
# except build/, which is used as an MSBuild target.
!**/packages/build/
# Uncomment if necessary however generally it will be regenerated when needed
#!**/packages/repositories.config
我想知道，为什么他们不能简单地写：
# NuGet Packages
# The packages folder can be ignored because of Package Restore
packages/*
# except build/, which is used as an MSBuild target.
!packages/build/
# Uncomment if necessary however generally it will be regenerated when needed
#!packages/repositories.config
https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/VisualStudio.gitignore
不，如果剩余的模式不包含斜杠，那么领先的**/只会过时。
https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore的文档在我看来有点误导，正如它所述
If the pattern does not contain a slash /, Git treats it as a shell glob
pattern and checks for a match against the pathname relative to the
location of the .gitignore file (relative to the toplevel of the work
tree if not from a .gitignore file).
但实际上只匹配文件或目录的名称，而不是整个路径。
所以**/packages/build在任何深度都匹配packages/build。
packages/build因为它包含斜杠实际上与/packages/build相同，并且只与packages/build匹配与ignore文件相同的级别。
另一方面，build在任何深度匹配build，因此实际上与**/build相同。
而/build只匹配与忽略文件相同级别的build。
它总是取决于模式（在删除尾部斜杠后，如果存在）是否包含任何斜杠。
在问题中有一个错误的假设（但由于编辑而已经没有了）。为了证明这个问题：
$ mkdir tignore
$ cd tignore
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in .../tignore/.git
$ git status -uall --short
$ mkdir sub sub/foo; touch sub/foo/bar; echo foo/bar > .gitignore; git status -uall -s
?? .gitignore
?? sub/foo/bar
$ echo '**/foo/bar' > .gitignore; git status -uall -s
?? .gitignore
$
换句话说，为了让Git忽略foo/bar子目录中的文件sub，我们必须在顶级**/foo/bar中编写.gitignore，因为foo/bar与sub/foo/bar不匹配。
请注意，对于不包含嵌入斜杠的忽略条目，规则是不同的。那是：
$ echo bar > .gitignore
$ git status -uall -s
?? .gitignore
$
在这里，我们不需要领先的**/。因此，当要忽略的名称不包含其自己的嵌入式**/时，领先的/是多余的，但当要忽略的名称确实包含其自己的嵌入式/时，这并不是多余的。
有关奇怪的.gitignore规则的更长时间的处理，请参阅gitignore rules (applied to a codeigniter stack)。