# git-clean

## NAME



           git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
    


## SYNOPSIS



           _git clean_ [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] [<pathspec>...]
    


## DESCRIPTION



           Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not
           under version control, starting from the current directory.
    
           Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the **-x**
           option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for
           example, be useful to remove all build products.
    
           If any optional _< pathspec>_... arguments are given, only those
           paths that match the pathspec are affected.
    


## OPTIONS



           -d
               Normally, when no <pathspec> is specified, git clean will not
               recurse into untracked directories to avoid removing too much.
               Specify -d to have it recurse into such directories as well.
               If a <pathspec> is specified, -d is irrelevant; all untracked
               files matching the specified paths (with exceptions for nested
               git directories mentioned under **--force**) will be removed.
    
           -f, --force
               If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not
               set to false, _git clean_ will refuse to delete files or
               directories unless given -f. Git will refuse to modify
               untracked nested git repositories (directories with a .git
               subdirectory) unless a second -f is given.
    
           -i, --interactive
               Show what would be done and clean files interactively. See
               “Interactive mode” for details. Configuration variable
               **clean.requireForce** is ignored, as this mode gives its own
               safety protection by going interactive.
    
           -n, --dry-run
               Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
               Configuration variable **clean.requireForce** is ignored, as
               nothing will be deleted anyway.
    
           -q, --quiet
               Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are
               successfully removed.
    
           -e <pattern>, --exclude=<pattern>
               Use the given exclude pattern in addition to the standard
               ignore rules (see gitignore(5)).
    
           -x
               Don’t use the standard ignore rules (see gitignore(5)), but
               still use the ignore rules given with **-e** options from the
               command line. This allows removing all untracked files,
               including build products. This can be used (possibly in
               conjunction with _git restore_ or _git reset_) to create a
               pristine working directory to test a clean build.
    
           -X
               Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to
               rebuild everything from scratch, but keep manually created
               files.
    


## INTERACTIVE MODE



           When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the files
           and directories to be cleaned, and goes into its interactive
           command loop.
    
           The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and
           gives a prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends with
           a single _>_ , you can pick only one of the choices given and type
           return, like this:
    
                   *** Commands ***
                       1: clean                2: filter by pattern    3: select by numbers
                       4: ask each             5: quit                 6: help
                   What now> 1
    
           You also could say **c** or **clean** above as long as the choice is
           unique.
    
           The main command loop has 6 subcommands.
    
           clean
               Start cleaning files and directories, and then quit.
    
           filter by pattern
               This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues
               an "Input ignore patterns>>" prompt. You can input
               space-separated patterns to exclude files and directories from
               deletion. E.g. "*.c *.h" will exclude files ending with ".c"
               and ".h" from deletion. When you are satisfied with the
               filtered result, press ENTER (empty) back to the main menu.
    
           select by numbers
               This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues
               an "Select items to delete>>" prompt. When the prompt ends
               with double _> >_ like this, you can make more than one
               selection, concatenated with whitespace or comma. Also you can
               say ranges. E.g. "2-5 7,9" to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the
               list. If the second number in a range is omitted, all
               remaining items are selected. E.g. "7-" to choose 7,8,9 from
               the list. You can say _*_ to choose everything. Also when you
               are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER (empty)
               back to the main menu.
    
           ask each
               This will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one in
               order to delete items. Please note that this action is not as
               efficient as the above two actions.
    
           quit
               This lets you quit without doing any cleaning.
    
           help
               Show brief usage of interactive git-clean.
    


## CONFIGURATION



           Everything below this line in this section is selectively included
           from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as
           what’s found there:
    
           clean.requireForce
               A boolean to make git-clean refuse to delete files unless -f
               is given. Defaults to true.
    


## GIT



           Part of the git(1) suite
    


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