From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:25:16 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] make diff --color-words customizable
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0901090121432.30769@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <1231459505-14395-1-git-send-email-trast@student.ethz.ch>

Hi,

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009, Thomas Rast wrote:

> Allows for user-configurable word splits when using --color-words. This 
> can make the diff more readable if the regex is configured according to 
> the language of the file.
> 
> For now the (POSIX extended) regex must be set via the environment
> GIT_DIFF_WORDS_REGEX.  Each (non-overlapping) match of the regex is
> considered a word.  Anything characters not matched are considered
> whitespace.  For example, for C try
> 
>   GIT_DIFF_WORDS_REGEX='[0-9]+|[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*|(\+|-|&|\|){1,2}|\S'
> 
> and for TeX try
> 
>   GIT_DIFF_WORDS_REGEX='\\[a-zA-Z@]+ *|\{|\}|\\.|[^\{} [:space:]]+'

Interesting idea.  However, I think it would be better to do the opposite, 
have _word_ patterns.  And even better to have _one_ pattern.

Then we could have a --color-words-regex=<regex> option.

BTW I think you could do what you intended to do with a _way_ smaller 
and more intuitive patch.

Ciao,
Dscho