Matthew DeVore <matvore@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > When I tried to figure out what "prune" and "prune_data" ("data" is > quite vague, so these two fields read like "prune_1" and "prune_2") > referred to in "revision.h",... It was unfortunate that 8efdc326 ("rev-lib: Make it easy to do rename tracking (take 2)", 2006-03-10) had to rename "paths" to "prune_data" when attempting to generalize the history simplification mechanism by introducing "prune_fn", which can be used instead of a fixed function, and as one half of the pair, "data used by the prune function" made some sense. When we partially reverted that over-generalization with 53b2c823 ("revision walker: mini clean-up", 2007-11-05), we probably should have changed the prune_data back to paths, but we didn't. Worse yet, when we made prune_data from a void pointer to struct pathspec at afe069d1 ("struct rev_info: convert prune_data to struct pathspec", 2010-12-17), we really should have renamed it back to paths, but we didn't. So I think it is a good idea to get rid of prune_data and make it clear it is no longer a generic thing but cannot be anything but a pathspec. I am not sure what the bit should be called, though. It is a bit to enable any history simplification and not limited to pathspec limiting (e.g. simplify-by-decoration enables it, too).