Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-code-owners

What changes are you suggesting?

The existing documentation for file syntax does not make it explicitly clear that a pattern can only be specified once, and that if >1 instance of a pattern is present, the last instance will take precedence.

For example the following example would only request review from @doctocat, @octocat would not be included in the reviewers.

apps/ @octocat
apps/ @doctocat

I would propose that a line be added to the CODEOWNERS syntax section indicating that a repeated pattern is not supported.

Additional information

Additionally, I believe an issue should be raised internally against the validation of codeowners files - the above example will be marked as valid by the CODEOWNERS validation, and will not provide any indication to the end user that only the last instance of the pattern will be used.