From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:15:13 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-diff: Add --staged as a synonym for --cached.
Message-ID: <20081112191512.GA21401@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <32541b130811120739t95455d8n9b8056a8033491c3@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:39:21AM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:

> > I thought about that at first, too, but the working tree is even more
> > painful. You would have to hash every changed file on the filesystem to
> > create the tree object.
> 
> Is that so bad?  You have to read all those files anyway in order to
> do a diff.

I don't know for sure, as I haven't tried it. But you would need to read
them twice (once to hash, and then once to diff) plus the extra
computation time of hashing. So assuming you have a decent cache, you
pay the disk access only once.

Maybe it would be negligible, but I would have to see numbers to be
convinced either way.

-Peff