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Re: [RFC PATCH] make diff --color-words customizable

From
Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>
Date
Jan 9, 2009, 00:50 UTC
Message-ID
<200901090151.10880.trast@student.ethz.ch>
In-Reply-To
<alpine.DEB.1.00.0901090121432.30769@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
Johannes Schindelin wrote:
Show 12 quoted lines
> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009, Thomas Rast wrote:
> 
> > Allows for user-configurable word splits when using --color-words. This 
> > can make the diff more readable if the regex is configured according to 
> > the language of the file.
> > 
> > For now the (POSIX extended) regex must be set via the environment
> > GIT_DIFF_WORDS_REGEX.  Each (non-overlapping) match of the regex is
> > considered a word.  Anything characters not matched are considered
> > whitespace.  For example, for C try
> > 
> >   GIT_DIFF_WORDS_REGEX='[0-9]+|[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*|(\+|-|&|\|){1,2}|\S'
[...]
> Interesting idea.  However, I think it would be better to do the opposite, 
> have _word_ patterns.  And even better to have _one_ pattern.

I'm not sure I understand. It _is_ a single pattern. The examples just have several cases to distinguish various semantic groups that can occur, as a sort of "half tokenizer". (The C example isn't very complete however.)

> BTW I think you could do what you intended to do with a _way_ smaller 
> and more intuitive patch.
How?

I don't think the existing mechanism, which just replaces all whitespace with newlines and does a line diff to find out which words changed, can "just" be adapted. We will have to insert extra newlines at points where the regex said to split a word, but where there was no whitespace in the original content. If there's a significantly easier way to do that than I hacked up, please share.

Or maybe I got your original code all wrong?
-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch
Previous: Johannes SchindelinNext: Johannes Schindelin
Message 3 of 34 in “make diff --color-words customizable”
  1. make diff --color-words customizableThomas Rast, Jan 9, 2009
  2. Johannes SchindelinJan 9, 2009
  3. Thomas RastJan 9, 2009
  4. Johannes SchindelinJan 9, 2009
  5. color-words: take an optional regular expression describing wordsJohannes Schindelin, Jan 9, 2009
  6. Thomas RastJan 9, 2009
  7. Teemu LikonenJan 9, 2009
  8. make diff --color-words customizableThomas Rast, Jan 10, 2009
  9. Jakub NarebskiJan 10, 2009
  10. Johannes SchindelinJan 10, 2009
  11. Jakub NarebskiJan 10, 2009
  12. Johannes SchindelinJan 10, 2009
  13. Jakub NarebskiJan 12, 2009
  14. Johannes SchindelinJan 13, 2009
  15. Davide LibenziJan 10, 2009
  16. Jakub NarebskiJan 13, 2009
  17. Davide LibenziJan 13, 2009
  18. Johannes SchindelinJan 10, 2009
  19. Thomas RastJan 10, 2009
  20. Johannes SchindelinJan 10, 2009
  21. Junio C HamanoJan 11, 2009
  22. 0/4 customizable --color-wordsThomas Rast, Jan 11, 2009
  23. 1/4 word diff: comments, preparations for regex customizationThomas Rast, Jan 11, 2009
  24. 2/4 word diff: customizable word splitsThomas Rast, Jan 11, 2009
  25. 3/4 word diff: make regex configurable via attributesThomas Rast, Jan 11, 2009
  26. 4/4 word diff: test customizable word splitsThomas Rast, Jan 11, 2009
  27. Junio C HamanoJan 11, 2009
  28. Junio C HamanoJan 11, 2009
  29. Johannes SchindelinJan 11, 2009
  30. Johannes SchindelinJan 11, 2009
  31. Junio C HamanoJan 11, 2009
  32. Jeff KingJan 9, 2009
  33. Johannes SchindelinJan 9, 2009
  34. Jeff KingJan 9, 2009

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