From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:39:10 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] diff: ensure consistent diff behavior with -I<regex> across output formats
Message-ID: <xmqqfre7ex8x.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20250803145155.57894-1-yldhome2d2@gmail.com>

Lidong Yan <yldhome2d2@gmail.com> writes:

> `git diff -I<regex>` option is inconsistently applied across various
> output formats. In some cases, files would appear in the `--name-only`
> output but not in the accompanying `--stat` or `-p` outputs, despite
> the user explicitly requesting to ignore certain changes using
> `-I<regex>`. Not only for `-I<regex>`, but this inconsistency also
> exists for other output formats that have `.diff_from_content` set
> (e.g. `-w`, `--ignore-space-at-eol` and `--ignore-space-change`).

Perhaps the above (and code, like the name of the helper functions
and possibly the name of the new file) should be updated to place
much stress on -I<regex>, as "ignore-regex" is not any more special
than other things that flips .diff_from_content bit in this new
iteration of the patch.

I do not quite get why ignore_match() has to know so much about how
the real code in diff.c that implements -I<regex> works, compared to
the illustration of "here is how to do it" Peff posted, though.  It
somehow feels too much duplicated code.

Thanks.