Re: Why do dates in refspecs require the reflog?

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com> writes:

> ... how can I view the
> contents of a file at a specified relative time frame ...

"git log --until=A --since=B master" asks Git to start traversing
the history backward from the tip of your current 'master' branch,
without showing anything until it finds a commit with timestamp A
(or before), and then show the commits it finds during the traversal
until it finds a commit with timestamp B (or before) and then stop.

Which I think is the closest thing you are asking for.

Note that there is *no* guarantee that any of these commits you find
that way was actually at the tip of the public history (i.e. the one
casual users would have seen after running "git clone" at that time).

The committer may have started working at around time B, worked for
quite some time, and pushed the result out way after time A.  Then
the first time general public observed the commits you find in that
time range could be after time A by many weeks, which is perfectly
normal in the real, distributed, world.