Re: Mismatch meaning between git-diff and git-log for the .. (double dot notation) and ... (triple dot notation)

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 23, 2019, 21:59 UTC
Message-ID: <20191223215928.GB38316@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20191223182939.GB676947@alpha>

Kevin Daudt wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 10:02:31AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> Please unlearn dot-dot and three-dots when using "git diff", which
>> is not about ranges but about comparing two endpoints.  If we were
>> reinventing Git today from scratch, we would make "git diff A..B" an
>> error.  You can consider it a bug that the command accepts a range
>> notation, but this will not change any time soon without a large
>> fight to find and fix uses of the syntax in scripts by longtime Git
>> users have written over the years.

[...]

> I agree that you should not use `A..B`, but what is wrong with
> `A...B`? The alternative is a lot more verbose.
>
> git diff $(git merge-base A B) B

Commands like "git checkout" have been learning a `...` shorthand which is not much better as far as intuitiveness goes:

	# doesn't work, just here for demonstration
	git diff A...B B

With hindsight, "git diff A..B" would be the perfect spelling for this, but that would break too many people's muscle memories and scripts. Would it make sense to have a commandline option for this?

	# doesn't work, just here for demonstration
	git diff --fork-point A B

A random thought, Jonathan