on 10/25/2007 11:55 AM Johannes Schindelin said the following:
> I am not so sure.  In other SCMs, "git status" may be a way to do "git 
> diff --name-only" or "git ls-files", but not in git.  Here, it strictly 
> means "what would be happening if I were to commit _right_ _now_?".
I somehow agree with your argument, but then again, sometimes I'm still interested in
*only* the status for a given directory.

IMHO, answering the question "what would be happening if...?" should be  git-commit's task
(e.g. git-commit --dry-run). And git-status should behave similar to git-log and git-diff.

For those interested: I have attached a little script that mimics current git-status
(except the "dry-run" stuff) but also can take a list of directories/files.