.gitignore is ignored by Git

Question

My .gitignore file seems to be being ignored by Git - could the .gitignore file be corrupt? Which file format, locale or culture does Git expect?

Answer 1

As with the other solutions, commit first and be aware that you will lose any un-committed changes.

I had better results with this:

git rm -r --cached .
git reset HEAD --hard
git status

Note that the status shouldn't have any modified files now.