Re: [PATCH] grep: --full-tree

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 26, 2009, 00:00 UTC
Message-ID: <7vd436p339.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <60F92BD7-6FFF-4D9A-B2F0-0858F4E90B59@wincent.com>

Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Oh, I wouldn't like that at all. I think it would be a very ugly UI
> wart, because it would basically make Git behave differently than
> every other command line tool that accepts paths. If it is to deviate
> from the extremely widespread convention that paths starting with /
> refer to absolute paths rooted at the root of the filesystem, then the
> justification for it would need to be very strong indeed.

There are at least two flaws in that argument.

 - git does not accept paths (it lets you specify patterns that match,
   e.g. t/ to name ptahs under t/ directory).

 - "/pathspec" does follow the widespread convention that a string that
   begin with a "/" refer to a path rooted at the root _in the context_;
   the definition of root may or may not match the filesystem root.

   Think of things like <a href="/$path">Top</a>.  Does "/$path" mean at
   the root of filesystem?  No.

I am not married to the "git grep -e frotz /Documentation" notation, by the way. I just didn't think of a different notation that is equally short, sweet and logical. We could do //Documentation if it makes it more distinct, but I do think it is worse than a single slash.