From: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:33:44 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Teach "log -F --author=<match>" to behave better
Message-ID: <20080904133344.GA3197@mithlond.arda.local>
In-Reply-To: <7vprnk5n3c.fsf_-_@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote (2008-09-04 01:31 -0700):

> To handle --author=<match> request, the code created a grep
> instruction that tried to match a line that begins with 'author ' and
> <match> somewhere on the same line.  "begins with 'author '" obviously
> needs to be expressed with an regexp '^author '.
> 
> When the user specifies --fixed-string, this does not work at all.

> This extends the grep machinery so that a match insn can ignore user
> specified --fixed-string request, and uses the '( -e A --and -e B )'
> construct from the grep machinery in order to express "has to begin
> with '^author ', and also the same line must match the given pattern".

I want to add a side note here because this _may_ be related to what 
I found almost two months ago:

    "Patterns work unexpectedly with 'git log' commit limiting"
    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/88813

One of the problems was that with

    git log -E --author=pattern

the pattern is interpreted as basic regexp but with 

    git log --author=pattern -E

as extended rexexp.