What does * ~ do in a .gitignore file?

Question

I just ran the gitignore file, which ends with the line * ~, but I could not find a description of what this does.

Answer 1

It ignores all files whose name ends with ~ , which is the usual suffix for text editor backup files.

* is a special character and means "any sequence of zero or more characters", and ~ is an ordinary character. The union of two parts: "zero or more characters, followed by the character" ~ ".

Answer 2

It tells Git to ignore all files that end with a tilde (~), which is used by many text editors such as Emacs or Vi to mark temporary files.