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