Show ignored files in git

I am getting my feet wet on git and have the following issue:

My project source tree:

/
|
+--src/
+----refs/
+----...
|
+--vendor/
+----...

I have code (currently MEF) in my vendor branch that I will compile there and then move the references into /src/refs which is where the project picks them up from.

My issue is that I have my .gitignore set to ignore *.dll and *.pdb. I can do a 'git add -f bar.dll' to force the add of the ignored file which is ok, the problem is I can not figure out to list what files exist that are ignored.

I want to list the ignored files to make sure that I don't forget to add them.

I have read the man page on git-ls-files and can not make it work. It seems to me that 'git ls-files --exclude-standard -i' should do what I want. What am I missing?

UPDATE:

git ls-files -i will not work, you get the error: ls-files: --ignored needs some exclude pattern

git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude as VonC sugested below is indeed the answer. the --exclude-standard option also works instead of --exclude-from.

Summary of what works:

git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
git-ls-files --others -i --exclude-standard

From stackoverflow

• git ls-files -i
  

  should work, except its source code indicates:

  if (show_ignored && !exc_given) {
                  fprintf(stderr, "%s: --ignored needs some exclude pattern\n",
                          argv[0]);
  

  exc_given ?

  It turns out it need one more parameter after the -i to actually list anything:

  Try:

  git ls-files -i --exclude-from=[Path_To_Your_Global].gitignore
  

  (but that would only list your cached (non-ignored) object, with a filter, so that is not quite what you want)

  ---

  Example:

  $ cat .git/ignore
      # ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
      *.[oa]
      $ cat Documentation/.gitignore
      # ignore generated html files,
      *.html
      # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
      !foo.html
      $ git ls-files --ignored \
          --exclude='Documentation/*.[0-9]' \
          --exclude-from=.git/ignore \
          --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore
  

  ---

  Actually, in my 'gitignore' file (called 'exclude'), I find a command line that could help you:

  F:\prog\git\test\.git\info>type exclude
  # git ls-files --others --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
  # Lines that start with '#' are comments.
  # For a project mostly in C, the following would be a good set of
  # exclude patterns (uncomment them if you want to use them):
  # *.[oa]
  # *~
  

  So....

  git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
  git ls-files -o -i --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude
  
  git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard
  git ls-files -o -i --exclude-standard
  

  should do the trick.

  As mentioned in the ls-files man page, --others is the important part, in order to show you non-cached, non-committed, normally-ignored files.

  --exclude_standard is not just a shortcut, but a way to include all standard "ignored patterns" settings.

  exclude-standard
  Add the standard git exclusions: .git/info/exclude, .gitignore in each directory, and the user's global exclusion file.

  Paul : Very nice. I'm continually surprised at what Git can do.

  igorgue : the best documentation, read the source code :)

  VonC : Thank you, dbr, for fixing the style of git commands.

  gatoatigrado : I'm continually surprised at how difficult these things are to find out... compare with $(hg help stat), "-i --ignored show only ignored files"

• While generally correct your solution does not work in all circumstances. Assume a repo dir like this:

  # ls **/*                                                                                                       
  doc/index.html  README.txt  tmp/dir0/file0  tmp/file1  tmp/file2
  
  doc:
  index.html
  
  tmp:
  dir0  file1  file2
  
  tmp/dir0:
  file0
  

  and a .gitignore like this:

  # cat .gitignore
  doc
  tmp/*
  

  This ignores the doc directory and all files below tmp. Git works as expected, but the given command for listing the ignored files does not. Lets have a look at what git has to say:

  # git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard                                                            
  tmp/file1
  tmp/file2
  

  Notice that doc is missing from the listing. You can get it with:

  # git ls-files --others --ignored --exclude-standard --directory                                                
  doc/
  

  Notice the additional --directory option.

  From my knowledge there is no one command to list all ignored files at once. But I don't know why tmp/dir0 does not show up at all.

• Another option that's pretty clean (No pun intended.):

  git clean -Xn
  

  Explanation:

  git help clean
  

  git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
  -X - Remove only files ignored by git.
  -n, --dry-run - Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done.

  Cheers, mate.

  Matt

  P.S. I'm not actually Australian, just proud of my answer. :)

  Andrew Burns : Nifty... however the reason I asked the original question was so that I could make sure that vendor files (*.dll) that were supposed to be there were... so deleting them would not be the desired result. HOWEVER: this is good to know as I have changed my strategy from ignoreing *.dll to ignoring my build output folder (but not my vendor folders). This would be a good alternative to `make clean` and very helpful on a build server.

  MattDiPasquale : Glad to help. When used with the -n option, as shown above, git clean doesn't delete anything.