I am attempting to use a .gitignore file with negated patterns (lines starting with !), but it's not working the way I expect. As a minimal example, I have the folllowing directory structure: C:/gittest -- .gitignore -- aaa/ -- bbb/ -- file.txt -- ccc/ -- otherfile.txt and in my gitignore file, I have this: aaa/ !aaa/ccc/ My understanding (based on this: http://ftp.sunet.se/pub//Linux/kernel.org/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html) is that the file aaa/ccc/otherfile.txt should not be ignored, but in fact git is ignoring everything under aaa. Am I misunderstanding this sentence: "An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again."? BTW, this is on Windows with msysgit 1.7.0.2.