Synopsis:
When expanding '%gd' placeholder (reflog selector), git substitutes user-specified --date format, which mangles the reflog.
Description:
I was writing a script that expects a stash reflog and a date on stdin:
% git stash list --format='%gd%n%ad'
stash@{0}
Sat Aug 5 13:26:30 2017 -0400
stash@{1}
Sat Aug 5 13:18:54 2017 -0400
…Since this date is going to be presented to the user, I wanted to apply my own date format:
% git stash list --format='%gd%n%ad' --date=format:%Y/%m/%d
stash@{2017/08/05}
2017/08/05
stash@{2017/08/05}
2017/08/05
…Unfortunately this mangles the reflog as well (e.g. "stash@{2017/08/05}"), making it useless when passed back to git.Apparently stashes can be referenced by date, which is fine I suppose. But those dates should never be subject to user-defined formatting via --date=format:….
I'd expect the above command to instead output:
% git stash list --format='%gd%n%ad' --date=format:%Y/%m/%d
stash@{0}
2017/08/05
stash@{1}
2017/08/05
…or at least always use the ISO date format:
% git stash list --format='%gd%n%ad'
stash@{2017-08-05 13:26:30 -0400}
2017-08-05 13:26:30 -0400
stash@{2017-08-05 13:18:54 -0400}
2017-08-05 13:18:54 -0400
…Steve