[PATCH V3 0/2] specify commit by negative pattern

Add support for negative pattern matching in @^{/<pattern>} style revision specifiers. So now you can find the first commit whose message doesn't match a pattern, complementing the existing positive matching. e.g.:

    $ git rebase -i @^{/!-^WIP}

My use-case is in having a "work, work, work, rebase, push"-style workflow, which generates a lot of "WIP foo" commits. While rebasing is usually handled via "git rebase -i origin/master", occasionally I will already have several "good, but not yet ready to push" commits hanging around while I finish work on related commits. In these situations, the ability to quickly "git diff @^{/!-^WIP}" to get an overview of all changes "since the last one I was happy with", can be useful.

This is the second version of the patch series. The previous attempt used the notation @^{/!WIP}, rather than @^{/!-WIP}, so the "modifier" was the '!' character. Now, '!' is taken as an indicator that the pattern is to be interpreted differently, and '-' is taken as an indicator of how it is to be interpreted differently. This follows recent discussion with "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com> and much-less recent discussion archived at:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/40460/focus=40477

In summary, '!' is to be used as an "escape hatch", for further extension of the "name commit by pattern" functionality. Theorised future extensions indicated things like "what was to be searched", e.g.: @^{/!(a=author)}. With only two interpretations of the '!' leader, for now (including the '!!' literal notation), adding such a verbose form, such as '@^{/!(negative)foo}', seemed inappropriate at this time. In the event that such verbose forms are ever implemented, this new form may act as a shorthand, for a basic case.

Will Palmer (2):
  test for '!' handling in rev-parse's named commits
  object name: introduce '^{/!-<negative pattern>}' notation

 Documentation/revisions.txt | 11 +++++-----
 sha1_name.c                 | 20 ++++++++++++-----
 t/t1511-rev-parse-caret.sh  | 53 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 3 files changed, 73 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)