Why git add Wildcard Won’t Stage Your Nested Files (And How to Fix It)

I recently ran into an issue while working with Git. I had a bunch of Markdown files spread across multiple nested folders and wanted to stage them all at once. So I ran:

git add *.md

But only the .md files in the current directory got added (to the staging area). The .md files in the nested directories didn’t get added.

The root casue: the * wildcard isn’t processed by Git, but by the shell. So the shell was only matching them in the current folder. What a revelation!

After a few minutes of worrying and searching, I figured out two different ways of solving this. Solution 1 uses Git to do the work while solution 2 uses bash.

Solution 1 (Git way)

The solution is to use:

git add '**/*.md'

Let’s break down how git add '**/*.md' works:

• git add - tells Git to stage files

• '**/*.md' - First, the quotes are important. They prevent your shell (like Bash or Zsh) from expanding the *s. Without the quotes, your shell would handle the wildcard expansion. Most shells don’t match files recursively by default. So, Git receives the literal string **/*.md.

• **/ — the double asterisk means “search recursively through all directories.” It matches zero or more directory levels. ¹

  • So **/*.md matches:

    • notes.md (in the current directory)
    • docs/guide.md (one folder deep)
    • posts/tutorials/intro.md (multiple levels deep)

In short: git add '**/*.md' tells Git itself (not the shell) to recursively find and stage all Markdown files under the current directory & nested ones.

Solution 2 (bash way)

If you’re using Bash with globstar enabled, you can do:

shopt -s globstar
git add **/*.md

Both commands will add all .md files, even those nested in deep subfolders.

It was a small issue, but it served as a reminder for me of how easy it is to overlook the basics of how tools interact.

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