On May 29, 2022 6:40 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: >Pathspecs with only negative elements did not work with some commands that >pass the pathspec along to a subprocess. For instance, > > $ git add -p -- ':!*.txt' > >should add everything except for paths ending in ".txt", but it gets complaint from >underlying "diff-index" and aborts. > >We used to error out when a pathspec with only negative elements in it, like the >one in the above example. Later, 859b7f1d (pathspec: >don't error out on all-exclusionary pathspec patterns, 2017-02-07) updated the >logic to add an empty string as an extra element. The intention was to let the >extra element to match everything and let the negative ones given by the user to >subtract from it. > >At around the same time, we were migrating from "an empty string is a valid >pathspec element that matches everything" to "either a dot or ":/" is used to >match all, and an empty string is rejected", between d426430e (pathspec: warn on >empty strings as pathspec, >2016-06-22) and 9e4e8a64 (pathspec: die on empty strings as pathspec, 2017-06- >06). I think 9e4e8a64, which happened long after 859b7f1d happened, was not >careful enough to turn the empty string 859b7f1d added to either a dot or ":/". > >A care should be taken as the definition of "everything" depends on >subcommand. For the purpose of "add -p", adding a "." to add everything in the >current directory is the right thing to do. But for some other commands, ":/" (i.e. >really really everything, even things outside the current subdirectory) is the right >choice. > >We would break commands in a big way if we get this wrong, so add a handful of >test pieces to make sure the resulting code still excludes the paths that are >expected and includes "everything" else. Thanks for the heads up. I have to check into this for some scripting. Not worried but glad to know. Thanks, --Randall
