Re: [Question]: Does "git log" involve some stochastic operations?

From: Chris Torek <chris.torek@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 13, 2022, 02:35 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPx1GveLZm0NH7hBqRSKHJMXttT8Wwnqm3ebjUEpbEXNwh+61w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20d7c54f-7438-1124-7a9e-fdc902a4cc18@intel.com>

On Fri, Aug 12, 2022 at 7:11 PM Wang, Lei <lei4.wang@intel.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>  > git log --numstat --since="2022-06-01" --until="2022-06-21"
> --no-merges --format=%n%n%s%n%H%n%cs%n%an\<%ae
>
> The number of the commits in the output is slightly different. I didn't
> do any sync operation in the repo, so the only reason I can found is
> that maybe git log involves some stochastic operations, so each time the
> output will be a little changed. Is my assumption right?

The `--since` and `--until` date values use the *current time* if you do not specify an exact time. For instance, "yesterday" means "precisely 24 hours ago" (86400 seconds ago), and "--since 2022-06-01" means "since 1 June 2022 at whatever time of day it is right now". If you want commits with timestamps that are since *midnight* on that day, include the midnight part in the date.

(This is probably a UX bug, of sorts: to mean "at now-oclock on a given date" we should probably have a syntax like "2022-06-21:(now)" and when a specific date is given, the default should be midnight for "since" and 23:59:59 for "until", or 23:59:60 if that's a leap-second date. But changing this is probably not in the cards.)

Chris