Re: [PATCH] Correct documentation wording for diff options -S and --pickaxe-all

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 31, 2008, 23:21 UTC
Message-ID: <7v63pg3h4o.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080831230304.GA30480@zakalwe.fi>

Heikki Orsila <heikki.orsila@iki.fi> writes:

Show 22 quoted lines

> Signed-off-by: Heikki Orsila <heikki.orsila@iki.fi>
> ---
>  Documentation/diff-options.txt |    6 +++---
>  1 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/diff-options.txt b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
> index 1759386..062a8ae 100644
> --- a/Documentation/diff-options.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
> @@ -160,12 +160,12 @@ endif::git-format-patch[]
>  	number.
>  
>  -S<string>::
> -	Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
> +	Look for differences that contain <string> in the change.
>  
>  --pickaxe-all::
>  	When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
> -	changeset, not just the files that contain the change
> -	in <string>.
> +	changeset, not just the files that contain <string>
> +	in the change.

Thanks, but if we are doing this, we should reword it to something less misleading. The pickaxe search does not look for changes that contains string in the sense people might expect (e.g. "diff -u0 | grep string").

The machinery looks at the old and new copy, and considers it a match if they have different numbers of "string" in them.

So perhaps something like this

-S<string>::
	Look for differences that changes the number of <string> in the
	file.

--pickaxe-all::
	When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset,
        not just the files for which the number of <string> in them
	changes.

but I am bad at writing, so I'll ask others to come up with a better wording.