From: Junio C Hamano Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:28:58 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] --stat: ensure at least one '-' for deletions, and one '+' for additions Message-ID: <7vd59fquc5.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: Johannes Schindelin writes: > However, I would argue it's actually an improvement. If you have as many > additions as deletions, there should be an equal number of '-' and '+'. That's one way to look at it. Now how would you explain that a file that had 5 adds and 5 deletes gets three pluses and three minuses while another file that had 10 adds and no delets gets seven pluses? Compute total and add, make del=total-add: foo | 10 ++++--- bar | 10 +++++++ Compute add and del independently: foo | 10 +++--- bar | 10 +++++++ > After all, the integer number of symbols is just an approximation anyway. Yes, and my guess is that the graph is usually much wider than 7 columns as depicted above, so 3 vs 4 inconsistency in the former is less noticeable than 6 vs 7 inconsistency in the latter to the eye. If we have to make a compromise, I think getting the lines for the files that have the same number of changes to line up at the right end would be more important. Another way is what I suggested earlier -- if the width is odd, drop one to avoid this problem altogether. That would also be acceptable and probably be more consistent.