What are staged, unstaged, and untracked files

🟡 Untracked Files

Files that are not yet being tracked by Git.

• These are new files in your working directory.
• Git doesn’t know about them until you explicitly add them.

📦 Example:

You create a new file:

touch newfile.txt

Then run:

git status

Git says:

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
        newfile.txt

✅ What to do:

git add newfile.txt  # Moves it to staged state

🔴 Unstaged (Modified) Files

Files that Git is tracking, but you’ve made changes to them since the last commit — and haven’t staged those changes yet.

📦 Example:

You modify index.js, then run:

git status

You’ll see something like:

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
        modified: index.js

✅ What to do:

git add index.js  # Stages the modified file

🟢 Staged Files

Files that are ready to be committed. You’ve told Git, “These are the changes I want to include in the next commit.”

📦 How they get here:

git add file.txt

Then git status will say:

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
        modified: file.txt

✅ What to do:

git commit -m "Update file.txt"

📁 Special Cases: Excluding Files During git add

When staging multiple files or entire directories, you can exclude specific files or folders on the fly using pathspec magic syntax, without modifying .gitignore.

1. Exclude Files Using :(exclude) or !:

You can prevent specific files or directories from being added by using either of these patterns:

✅ Exclude a file:

git add . ':!path/to/excluded_file.txt'

✅ Exclude a directory:

git add . ':!path/to/excluded_directory/'

This tells Git: “Stage all changes from the current directory (.) except the explicitly excluded file or folder.”

📝 Notes:

• The quotes are required to prevent shell expansion.
• This does not modify .gitignore, making it ideal for temporary/manual exclusions.

📌 Reference: This feature uses Git’s pathspec magic for on-the-fly control during staging.

🧠 Summary Table