Re: [WIP PATCH 0/5] support --exclude for diff/log commands

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 10, 2011, 06:11 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmxl37bdp.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1299726819-5576-1-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

> On the other hand, if we go with ':' as a mark of special pathspecs, then
>
>  - ":/" mark pathspecs relative to worktree root
>  - ":!" may mark negative pathspecs

I am still moderately negative on this "negative pathspec" stuff, as it will complicate the semantics (just one example: would a path that is covered by both positive and negative pathspecs included or excluded? would the last one win? would the more specific one win?) and makes the design harder to explain to the users. Depending on the semantics chosen, it may also make the implementation less efficient and more complex.

As the choice of the syntax goes, in the recent "grep --full-tree" discussion, I thought people are more or less happy with the colon prefixed "magic pathspec" syntax, and something along the lines of the above two seems to be a good design.

The two most important things to consider are to make sure that people with funny pathnames can work it around by quoting, and the prefixing scheme is extensible so that other types of magic can later be introduced with the same kind of escape hatch for people with funny pathnames that begin with or contain new magic characters used to trigger the new magic.

I said "something along the lines" above because ":/ for root, :! for negative" does not yet specify how the scheme would satisfy the above two consideration very well.