Re: [PATCH 4/4] diff.c: convert builtin funcname patterns to extended regular expressions

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 18, 2008, 07:31 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfxnxzz82.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <48D200D7.9080800@op5.se>

Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Can we issue a deprecation heads-up for the current "funcname"
> along with a "call for patterns" and then have "funcname" and
> "ereg_funcname" mean the same for a while until we obsolete
> ereg_funcname in favour of funcname, perhaps? I can't imagine
> anyone wanting to use posix regular expressions if extended
> ones are available everywhere.

I prefer not to obsolete anything, and that is one of the larger reasons that I did not object to xfuncname at all. It's shorter to spell than ereg_funcname (and sweeter to the eye).

Even when in some future _everybody_ uses xfuncname and nobody you and I know personally uses funcname anymore, I do not think it is worth the hassle to change the semantics of "funcname".

For one thing, "xfuncname" is _not_ that ugly that people would wish they could spell it just "funcname".

This reminds me of what Eric did to "commit" vs "dcommit". "commit" was renamed to "set-tree", and a command with a better semantics is called "dcommit". Perhaps not many people use "set-tree" and everybody keeps typing "dcommit" these days, but it is not worth renaming it to "commit", ever.