"Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > Each of these approaches is wasteful as it requires sending the list of > matching reference names across a pipe plus the cost of parsing that > output. > > Instead, it would be helpful to have a Git command that counts the > number of refs matching a list of patterns. For for-each-ref (which can be reused by branch and tag for no cost), I am on the fence but slightly in favor (partly because the code has already been written). But I have to wonder where changes that come from the above reasoning need to end, though. Do we count branches and tags because "git branch --list | wc -l" is too costly? Should we teach "git remote" the same trick? How about "git stash list"? "git show-index $pack_index"? "git ls-files"? How do we decide where to draw the line? When a command invocation in a large repository can produce records exceeding a million?
