[mayur-dhavan]

An explicit **/*/** pattern is caught by the */ normalization special case in GitIgnoreSpecPattern.__normalize_segments and compiles to a bare /, so GitIgnoreSpec.from_lines(['**/*/**']).match_file('a/') returns True while Git does not exclude a itself during traversal. Verified against a real tree: with .gitignore containing **/*/** and !a/keep.txt, git add -A -n shows it would stage a/keep.txt — Git does not exclude a itself, so the negation re-includes the file. pathspec instead reports match_file('a/keep.txt') as True (ignored), because the degenerate / regex makes the excluded-ancestor rule treat a as excluded, which suppresses the negation. Directory behavior is checked through traversal and the staging dry run; git check-ignore on a trailing-slash path can report a different verdict.

*/ and **/*/** are not equivalent in Git: the latter requires a descendant segment after the *. Under */ + !a/keep.txt, Git cannot re-include the canary (the parent directory is excluded); under **/*/** + !a/keep.txt, it can and does.

This change restricts the special case to the directory form it was written for (*/, is_dir_pattern=True) and lets an explicit **/*/** go through segment translation, which requires a descendant segment after the * (^(?s:.+/)?[^/]+/[^/]). Regression tests cover the directory verdict and the negation re-inclusion; the existing terminal-globstar tests from #137/#138/#164 are unchanged and still pass.

The gitwildmatch path already answers both probes the way Git does. The deprecated GitIgnoreBasicPattern still returns a bare / for this pattern and is left untouched.

Closed, unmerged PR #155 included the same condition change as part of a broader patch. This PR targets the still-reproducible **/*/** case on current master, with regression tests for the directory verdict and negation re-inclusion. PR #164 addressed the separate folder/**/ case.

[Copilot]

Copilot was unable to review this pull request because the user who requested the review has insufficient remaining quota.