Re: [PATCH 0/7] grep.c: teach --column to 'git-grep(1)'

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:58:30AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > Although there are interesting cases around inversion. For example:
> >
> >   git grep --not \( --not -e a --and --not -e b \)
> >
> > is equivalent to:
> >
> >   git grep -e a --or -e b
> >
> > Do people care if we actually hunt down the exact column where we
> > _didn't_ match "b" in the first case?  The two are equivalent, but I
> > have to wonder if somebody writing the first one really cares.
> 
> I may be misunderstanding the question, but I personally would feel
> that "git grep --not <ANYTHING>" is OK to say "the entire line is at
> fault that it did not satisify the criteria to match <ANYTHING>".
> I.e., I'd be happy if --column marked the first column as the
> beginning of the match, or --color painted the entire line in the
> output of the former.

Even if it's a double-inversion? The reason we carry both `col` and
`icol` is that it allows:

  git grep --not --not --not --not -e a

to still say "we found 'a' here". That's a dumb thing to ask for, but it
is true in the end that we show lines with "a" (and will colorize them
as such).

-Peff