Re: [PATCH 5/6] builtin/grep.c: show column numbers via --column-number

From: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Date: Apr 21, 2018, 05:36 UTC
Message-ID: <cef29224-718f-21e9-0242-8bcd8e9c20a6@web.de>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq4lk5b3ht.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

Am 21.04.2018 um 06:14 schrieb Junio C Hamano:

Show 20 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
>> Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> writes:
>>
>>> This commit teaches 'git-grep(1)' a new option, '--column-number'. This
>>> ...
>>> +`columnnumber`;;
>>> +	column number prefix (when using `-m`)
>>
>> Is there other people's tool (preferrably some variant of "grep")
>> that has an option to tell it to show the column number of the hit?
>> What is the option called there?  Does that tool let the option
>> squat on short-and-sweet '-m'?
>>
>> Thanks.
> 
> I still do not know if we have a good existing model system to take
> the longer optoin name from, but at least, GNU grep seems to use -m
> to mean a completely different thing, so I'd think that we would not
> assign '-m' to this new feature.

https://beyondgrep.com/feature-comparison/ is a good resource for such considerations.

ack and ripgrep use --column and no short option. If git grep got --column-number, then users could abbreviate it to --column (until it gets some other option that makes it ambiguous).

-m seems to be used for --max-count across the board ("Stop searching in each file after NUM matches") .

René