Re: Why does git-grep appear to treat exclude pathspecs differently?

From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 2, 2025, 16:14 UTC
Message-ID: <CALnO6CDgjmDd9kBCLzjb=JS6Rqg33aXesjthr_Q=HCA-ru2k6g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALnO6CDNDfx6L7CmPwE0eBZFkd_JkZf6hDwrADccAb14QhJGDg@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 5:49 PM D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com> wrote:

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>
> On Sat, Jul 26, 2025 at 8:16 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> > "D. Ben Knoble" <ben.knoble@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > With Git 2.48.1, I observe the following behavior:
> > >
> > > - "git ls-files :^:Documentation/RelNotes | grep Rel" yields
> > > "RelNotes", as expected
> >
> > It is deliberately confusing to spell ":(exclude)" as ":^:".
>
> What makes you say that? It's documented in "git help revisions":

Er, that's "git help glossary" for the quotes below—woops!

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>
>            A pathspec that begins with a colon : has special meaning. In the
>            short form, the leading colon : is followed by zero or more "magic
>            signature" letters (which optionally is terminated by another colon
>            :), and the remainder is the pattern to match against the path.
>
> and
>
>            exclude
>                After a path matches any non-exclude pathspec, it will be run
>                through all exclude pathspecs (magic signature: ! or its synonym
>                ^).
>

-- 
D. Ben Knoble