diff --git a/sphinx_gallery/gen_rst.py b/sphinx_gallery/gen_rst.py
index 2e1ba3ea5..398948ce1 100644
--- a/sphinx_gallery/gen_rst.py
+++ b/sphinx_gallery/gen_rst.py
@@ -434,9 +434,11 @@ def generate_dir_rst(src_dir, target_dir, gallery_conf, seen_backrefs):
     # get filenames
     listdir = [fname for fname in os.listdir(src_dir)
                if fname.endswith('.py')]
-    # limit which to look at based on regex
+    # limit which to look at based on regex (similar to filename_pattern)
     listdir = [fname for fname in listdir
-               if re.match(gallery_conf['ignore_pattern'], fname) is None]
+               if re.search(gallery_conf['ignore_pattern'],
+                            os.path.normpath(os.path.join(src_dir, fname)))
+               is None]
     # sort them
     sorted_listdir = sorted(
         listdir, key=gallery_conf['within_subsection_order'](src_dir))
diff --git a/sphinx_gallery/tests/tinybuild/examples/__init__.py b/sphinx_gallery/tests/tinybuild/examples/__init__.py
index 52606c912..f634a1b51 100644
--- a/sphinx_gallery/tests/tinybuild/examples/__init__.py
+++ b/sphinx_gallery/tests/tinybuild/examples/__init__.py
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
-from numpy import pad
+# This file is ignored through ignore_pattern so it does not need to have a
+# docstring following the sphinx-gallery convention (i.e. title + description)