Re: [RFC 2/2] grep: use '/' delimiter for paths

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 19, 2017, 18:54 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqpoji2851.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20170119150347.3484-3-stefanha@redhat.com>

Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> If the tree contains a sub-directory then git-grep(1) output contains a
> colon character instead of a path separator:
>
>   $ git grep malloc v2.9.3:t
>   v2.9.3:t:test-lib.sh:	setup_malloc_check () {
>   $ git show v2.9.3:t:test-lib.sh
>   fatal: Path 't:test-lib.sh' does not exist in 'v2.9.3'

I am slightly less negative on this compared to 1/2, but not by a big margin. The user wanted to feed a subtree to the command, instead of doing the more natural

    $ git grep -e malloc v2.9.3 -- t

So again, "contains a colon character" is not coming from what Git does, but the user gave Git "a colon character" when she didn't have to.

Having said that, if we wanted to start ignoring what the end-user said in the initial input like 1/2 and 2/2 does (i.e. "this specific tree object" as an input), I think the approach to solve for 1/2 and 2/2 should be the same. I think we should decide to do a slash instead of a colon, not because v2.9.3: has colon at the end and v2.9.3:t has colon in it, but because both of these are both bare tree objects. The patches presented does not seem to base their decision on the actual object type but on the textual input, which seems wrong.