How to I add something to the .gitignore so that the match is not recursive?

Question

How to I add something to the .gitignore so that the match is not recursive?

For example, I wish to ignore the directory foo and the file

Answer 1

From the gitignore manpage:

An optional prefix ! which negates the pattern; any matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will override lower precedence patterns sources.

So !* as the first line in your .gitignore will clear all previous patterns.