Re: [PATCH] object name: introduce ':::<oneline prefix>' notation

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Feb 24, 2007, 01:18 UTC
Message-ID: <7vzm741hfx.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0702232347310.22628@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Fri, 23 Feb 2007, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>
>> To name a commit, you can now say
>> 
>> 	git rev-parse ':::Initial revision of "git"'
>
> Alex Riesen and Shawn Pearce suggested ":/" instead of ":::", to reflect 
> the searching nature ("/" is the key to search in "less" output).
>
> Comments?

Sounds good. "git show :/path" does not currently mean "find /path in the index", so I do not see offhand it would interfere with anything.

However, it would be worthwhile to plant an escape hatch for future extension. Using short-and-sweet ":/" for the most common case such as exact prefix match would be fine, but we might want to say:

	':/!' syntax is reserved for future extension and does
	not look for a string that begins with "!".
	one extension "do not do anything special" is defined
	and is spelled as "!!" - so if you want to look for a
	commit that begins with "!something", please spell it
	as ':/!!something'

or something like that.

Obvious extension possibilities include:

	":/!(r=regexp)"
        ":/!(a=author)"
	":/!(d=2001-09-17)"
	":/!(p=Documentation/)"

or various combination of them e.g.

	":!(p=Documentation/)!(a=Johannes)Update command list"

to look for a commit by Johannes that touches Documentation/ area and oneline begins with "Update command list".

By the way, where do you start digging from?  From all refs?