Re: [PATCH] Interpret :/<pattern> as a regular expression

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi,

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > Earlier, Git interpreted the pattern as a strict prefix, which made
> > the operator unsuited in many cases.
> >
> > Now, the pattern is interpreted as a regular expression (which does not 
> > change the behaviour too much, since few onelines contain special regex 
> > characters), so that you can say
> >
> > 	git diff :/.*^Signed-off-by:.Zack.Brown
> >
> > to see the diff against the most recent reachable commit which was
> > signed off by Zack, whose Kernel Cousin I miss very much.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
> 
> While this perhaps is an improvement and people who are not
> interested in paying the price have a choice of not using this
> silly syntax, I am moderately annoyed that the syntax does not
> define "the most recent reachable" very well.  It is more like
> "the first one we happened to pick by diffing from reachable
> refs".  It would be more useful if it took "$commit:/$pattern"
> form to limit the search among reachable ones from named commit.

"Unfortunately", $commit:/$pattern is not a good syntax, since it suggests 
that you want to search _in_ $commit, not _from $commit.

How about ':/!commit=$commit:$pattern'?

Ciao,
Dscho