Fatal pathspec did not match any files ошибка

I have just started learing GIT. Follow their tutorial.

Now at the very beginning I got stuck with this error:

Fatal: pathspec 'file.txt' did not match any files.

Here is the screenshot of my procedure and commands:

What I am doing wrong here?

asked Nov 25, 2013 at 8:52

In order to add a file to git it has to exist. git add does not create a file, but tells git to add it to the current branch you are on and track it.

Currently, you have no tracked files, as you can see from your git status command. In order to track all files from the my-project directory, do a git add my-project/*. This will add all the files from that directory.

Next, if you do not have the desired file.txt, just create a text file and run git status. It should show you that you have an untracked file.txt file, which you can afterwards add to git using git add file.txt.

answered Nov 25, 2013 at 9:16

Note: you shouldn’t see this particular error message in git 1.9/2.0 (Q1 2014).

See commit 64ed07c by Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy (pclouds):

add: don’t complain when adding empty project root

This behavior was added in 07d7bed (add: don’t complain when adding
empty project root — 2009-04-28, git 1.6.3.2)
then broken by 84b8b5d (remove match_pathspec() in favor of match_pathspec_depth() — 2013-07-14, git 1.8.5).

Reinstate it.

The idea is:

We try to warn the user if one of their pathspecs caused no matches, as it may have been a typo. However, we disable the warning if the pathspec points to an existing file, since
that means it is not a typo but simply an empty directory.

Unfortunately, the file_exists() test was broken for one special case: the pathspec of the project root is just «».
This patch detects this special case and acts as if the file exists (which it must, since it is the project root).

The user-visible effect is that this:

$ mkdir repo && cd repo && git init && git add .

used to complain like:

fatal: pathspec '' did not match any files

but now is a silent no-op.

It is again a silent no-op in upcoming git 1.9/2.0 (Q1 2014)

answered Jan 12, 2014 at 17:46

I had the same problem because the file name is already appended with .txt and you are adding an extra .txt explicitly. You can try with this:

git add file.txt.txt

In order to add a file to git it has to exist. git add does not create a file, but tells git to add it to the current branch you are on and track it. So you should create a new file in the command line :

MD <new file>

After that you add :

git add <new file> 

Just give a file path while adding file to git add command, it works for me

$ git add mainFolder/…/file.extension

Note: mainFolder would be the folder inside your repo

answered Sep 7, 2020 at 10:21

I was also stuck over this. The solution is :
a) Make any txt file first let’s say » Readme.txt «

b) Copy this text file to you local git repo(folder) eg- C:/store

c) Go to windows command prompt if you are on windows (type » cmd » on search bar when you click on window button )

d) go to your local git repo. type ** echo hello > Readme.txt**
—> C:adminstore>echo hello > Readme.txt

echo hello is a dos command which shows output status text to the screen or a file.

answered Dec 3, 2017 at 7:34

The file is not matched because git add creates your file in the root directory but it actually does not create a file, but tells git to add it to the current branch you are on (adds files from the working directory to the staging area) and track it with git status command. So,

first create the .txt file and mention the path correctly!
let there is

$ git add path/filename.txt

(Not for it only, for any git command for a change in staging area write the whole path of the filename with forwarding slash after the command )

e.g-

if your file is on the desktop then

$ git add C:Users/username/Desktop/filename.txt

answered Dec 13, 2018 at 19:52

Here you go! Very simple. Need to place the .txt file manually in the pwd mentioned folder…

suumapat@SUUMAPAT-IN MINGW64 ~/newproject (master)
$ git add abc.txt
fatal: pathspec ‘abc.txt’ did not match any files

suumapat@SUUMAPAT-IN MINGW64 ~/newproject (master)
$ dir

suumapat@SUUMAPAT-IN MINGW64 ~/newproject (master)
$ pwd
/c/Users/suumapat/newproject

suumapat@SUUMAPAT-IN MINGW64 ~/newproject (master)
$ dir
abc.txt

suumapat@SUUMAPAT-IN MINGW64 ~/newproject (master)
$ git add abc.txt

answered Jan 1, 2020 at 12:14

I was having the same issue but with the Windows file system. Here was my solution that worked.

from the git project directory. Here is exactly what was displayed with the current directory.

D:ProjectsReactNativeproject>git add «scr/components/validate.js»

The file being entered into git was validate.js. It was in a directory under the project. That directory was srccomponents.

answered Jan 15, 2020 at 18:08

I had the same issue as well. Please confirm your file directory.
After moving my file to the correct directory it works.

This error is raised because the file you are adding to the repository is not created. First create the file and then add it to the staging area:

touch filename
git add filename

asked Aug 23, 2014 at 4:00

using this worked for me

git rm -f --cached <filename>

answered Jan 12, 2020 at 17:49

answered Jun 18, 2021 at 13:15

git stash 

did the job,
It restored the files that I had deleted using rm instead of git rm.

I did first a checkout of the last hash, but I do not believe it is required.

answered May 28, 2018 at 15:36

This chains work in my case:

1. git rm -r WebApplication/packages

There was a confirmation git-dialog. You should choose «y» option.

1. git commit -m "blabla"
2. git push -f origin <ur_branch>

Just for reference, I noticed that I had some files with permissions 000, maybe they were created with sudo , I don’t know, but after changing your permissions to 644 (I needed sudo for this operation), the problem was solved

sudo chmod 644 vendor/symfony/yaml

and the commit result :

diff --git a/vendor/symfony/yaml b/vendor/symfony/yaml
deleted file mode 160000
index 212a27b7..00000000
--- a/vendor/symfony/yaml
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-Subproject commit 212a27b731e5bfb735679d1ffaac82bd6a1dc996
diff --git a/vendor/symfony/yaml b/vendor/symfony/yaml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..20a0b9d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/vendor/symfony/yaml
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Subproject commit 212a27b731e5bfb735679d1ffaac82bd6a1dc996

answered Apr 29, 2021 at 10:39

I got the same error while I wanted to delete cached node_modules dir.

instead of
git rm -r -f --cached node_modules I had to use
git rm -r -f --cached **/node_modules, because the dir was not part of the root dir.

answered Oct 14, 2022 at 7:25

answered May 24 at 8:35

I had a similar issue with the following error message (Google brought me here):

error: pathspec 'elements (conflicted copy 2013-08-06)' did not match any file(s) known to git

I tried all of the solutions described here, but none worked for me.
I had two files that were simply not there anymore, but git was still showing me the files and it was impossible to remove them. They were created thanks to a conflict with Dropbox.

Steps that worked for me:

1. git stash

This resulted in the two files existing again in the folder

1. rename the files to something else

Git will now show the renamed files as untracked, but the old files still as deleted

Changes not staged for commit: (use «git add/rm …» to update
what will be committed) (use «git restore …» to discard
changes in working directory)
deleted: «elements (conflicted copy 2013-08-06)»
deleted: «layout (conflicted copy 2013-08-06)»

Untracked files: (use «git add …» to include in what will be
committed)
elements_dupe
layout_dupe

1. git add -A

Suddenly, git status displayed, that the previous files were renamed

Changes to be committed:
(use «git restore —staged …» to unstage)

renamed: «elements (conflicted copy 2013-08-06)» -> elements_dupe
renamed: «layout (conflicted copy 2013-08-06)» -> layout_dupe

1. git commit -m 'renamed duplicate files'

Afterwards, it was very easy to remove them by simply deleting the files and commit again.

answered Jun 16 at 9:43

I had a duplicate directory (~web/web) and it removed the nested duplicate when I ran rm -rf web while inside the first web folder.

I am trying to remove a folder from my Git repository with

git rm folderToRemove

but Git issues this error when I try to do so.

fatal: pathspec 'siteFiles/applicationFiles/templates/folderToRemove' 
did not match any files

My current directory is «templates.» I am finding this error odd since I can cd into the folder «folderToRemove,» so it clearly exists. What does this error mean?

asked Jun 1, 2012 at 23:21