Personal Catalogue: PHP & MySQL — Chapter 9, Exercise 1
====================================================

TASK
Create config.example.php with placeholder credentials, add
config.php to a real .gitignore file, and confirm (with git status,
assuming the project is a Git repository) that config.php genuinely
does not appear as a trackable file once .gitignore is in place.

SOLUTION

1. Create config.example.php with the placeholder content from the
   chapter (REPLACE_ME for both $dbUser and $dbPass).

2. Create (or add to) .gitignore in the project root:

    config.php

3. If the project isn't already a Git repository, initialize one for
   this exercise:

    git init
    git add .gitignore config.example.php
    git commit -m "Add config template and gitignore"

4. Run:

    git status

Expected output: config.example.php and .gitignore show as tracked
(or clean, if just committed), while config.php — assuming it already
exists locally with real credentials — does NOT appear anywhere in
the output at all, not even under "Untracked files." This is the
correct, working behavior: .gitignore causes Git to treat config.php
as invisible to status checks and add commands entirely, rather than
merely warning about it.

A direct confirmation that Git genuinely can't accidentally pick it up:

    git add config.php

Expected: Git either silently does nothing, or (with modern Git)
prints a message like "The following paths are ignored by one of your
.gitignore files: config.php" and refuses to stage it without an
explicit --force flag.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
----------------------------
It verifies the real, checkable outcome — config.php is genuinely
absent from git status output and git add actively refuses to stage
it — rather than just creating the .gitignore file and assuming it
works, since a typo in the filename or path would otherwise fail
silently.