From: James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:23:45 GMT
Subject: ls-files [Was: Re: Fwd: git status options feature suggestion]
Message-ID: <m3ej2p4g3r.fsf_-_@lugabout.jhcloos.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0810091101230.22125@pacific.mpi-cbg.de.mpi-cbg.de>

>>>>> "Johannes" == Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

>> > How about "git ls-files -o"?
>> 
>> doh... hadn't even heard of that command.

Johannes> Which is good!  As ls-files is listed as plumbing.
Johannes> Users should not need to call ls-files,

That is a bug, then.  ls-files is one of the more important user-level
commands in git.

It is vastly more efficient than find(1) or a --recursive call to
grep(1).

Searching through a repository to find which file(s) define or use some
function, struct, class or similar is a common occurance.  Or to find
which dir(s) contain(s) file(s) matching a given regexp.  Or a number
of other uses.  (Tags might be useful if one does a lot of searching
in a given repo, but grep is quicker for infrequent searches and the
tags utils do not support all file types.)

ls-files is definitely dual-use.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6