Re: [BUG] Highly inconsistent diff UI

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 25, 2013, 08:06 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0=Mt_ko=GZouoe-XfrD4ny94dbWn0eMMZH7pSYF2MYP6g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <87li87awwc.fsf@linux-k42r.v.cablecom.net>

Thomas Rast wrote:

> I already hate half of the existing syntax, and I cannot remember using
> ^! (except while investigating what 'git diff C^!' does and why not),
> ^@, @{-N} (only the related 'git checkout -'), @{date} and @{relative},
> ^{}, :/foo, and ^{/foo}, *at all*.

I'm actually totally in love with the existing syntax (with the possible exception of :/). I think it's extremely terse and expressive. People who don't care about such flexibility and power can stick to using ~ and ^. Enabling other users with additional syntax doesn't harm them in any way.

> ^{/foo} is the same as :/foo, except it properly groups.

No, not at all. First of all, ^{/foo} is invalid: you need to specify a ref to dig through, like HEAD^{/foo}. OTOH, :/foo returns a match from any ref.