Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] for-each-ref: introduce seeking functionality via '--skip-until'

From: Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 4, 2025, 14:02 UTC
Message-ID: <CAOLa=ZS0uP+5xso_SEG2GJZHeac-0F2_wMJKtvbFj_wROKbBkw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <87ms9kcbtq.fsf@igel.home>

Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On Jul 04 2025, Karthik Nayak wrote:
>
>> This series adds a '--skip-until' option in 'git-for-each-ref(1)'. When
>> used, the reference iteration seeks to the first matching reference and
>> iterates from there onward.
>
> I would have named the option --start-with.  It has the advantage that
> it is clear whether the matched ref is included.
>

We did discuss this internally, some other names we thought of: --skip-to --start-after --start-from --seek --skip-before --start-at

I think I was a bit against '--start-from' and '--start-at', because they imply that the reference provided must exist.

Consider the example

  $ git for-each-ref
  refs/heads/bar
  refs/heads/foo
  refs/heads/main

  $ git for-each-ref --seek=refs/heads/cat
  refs/heads/foo
  refs/heads/main

You can see that the reference doesn't have to exist. So implying that it should can be a bit confusing.

But I'm open to changing this, if we can conclude on any flag name...

> --
> Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
> GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510  2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1
> "And now for something completely different."