.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

OK, so in my case the accepted solution did not work, and what worked is described here:

Is Visual Studio 2013 ignoring your .gitignore file?

In short:

• Close Visual Studio.
• Navigate to your .git folder
• Delete ms-persist.xml
• Restart Visual Studio