Bug report: --invert-grep and --author seems to be incompatible.

Hello,

Tested on a Fedora 23.

You can combine `git log --author=someone --grep=something` to have all commits by "someone" where "something" can be grepped. If I want all commits by someone where "something" is not grepped, I would expect this command to return it:

But it does not work. Actually it looks like it just returns everything (as though I had done a simple `git log`). So there seems to be a problem here. Thanks!

Jehan

Jehan Pagès <jehan.marmottard@gmail.com> writes:

Do you see a commit that is by "someone" and has "something" in it in the output from the command?

I think --author=someone greps the "author " field in the commit object looking for the hit with "someone", and your request asks to show commits that either do not have "something" or was not written by "someone", I would guess.

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 7:04 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Indeed you are right! Commits which are by "someone" and have "something" in it in the same time are missing. So here --invert-grep works as a big "NOT" operator on the whole rest of the command line, which is not expected (at least by me).

Note that I can still see commits with "something", and I can also see commits by "someone" in my results. So my request actually ask for commits which have neither "something" nor are done by "someone".

Anyway I don't think that's the expected result, hence is still a bug. Am I wrong?

Jehan

Jehan Pagès <jehan.marmottard@gmail.com> writes:

Unlike "git grep", "git log" works with boolean expression that does not explicitly have a way to say "--and" and "--or", so only one interpretation has been chosen long time ago. All the terms are ORed together, and then the whole thing can be inverted with "--invert-grep". i.e. you are telling an equivalent of

    $ git grep --not \( -e "author someone" --or -e "something" \)

with the command line, and there is no way to combine the requested match criteria (there are two, "author must be somebody" and "something must be in the message") differently.

Given that, that is the "right" expectation, and as long as you get the behaviour, there is no "bug".

You can call it a lack of feature, though, and patches to implement a more flexible combination of match criteria like "git grep" allows is always welcome.

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 7:37 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

I see. Well it's a little counter-intuitive though, since the option is called --invert-grep. And the man indicates:

« Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match the pattern specified with --grep=<pattern>. »

So it gives the impression that the option is made only to invert the --grep part. Whereas in fact, you are saying it inverts any other optional selection (or at least also --author). A better naming should have been called --invert-matches, or even just --invert. And the man description should definitely be completed, IMO.

Maybe I will! This would be useful to have a little more capabilities for commit selection. Thanks.

Jehan

Jehan Pagès <jehan.marmottard@gmail.com> writes:

Renaming the options would not work well without harming existing users, but a patch to update the documentation is certainly very welcome.