Re: [PATCH v5 5/7] builtin/grep.c: add '--column' option to 'git-grep(1)'

Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> writes:

Why are these problematic in the first place?  If I said

    $ git grep -e first --and -e these
    $ git grep -e first --and --not -e those
    $ git grep -e first --or -e those

I'd expect that the first line of this paragraph will hit, and the first hit for these three are "these", "first" and "first", respectively. Most importantly, in the last one, "--or" can be omitted and the whole thing stops being "extended", so rejecting extended as a whole does not make much sense.

    $ git grep -v second
    $ git grep --not -e second

may hit all lines in this message (except for the obvious two lines), but we cannot say which column we found a hit. I am wondering if it is too grave a sin to report "the whole line is what satisfied the criteria given" and say the match lies at column #1.

By doing so, obviously we can sidestep the whole "this mode is sometimes incompatible" and "I need to compute a lot to see if the given expression is compatible or not" issues.