From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Interpret :/<pattern> as a regular expression
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:21:51 -0700
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To: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706130148080.4059@racer.site> (Johannes
	Schindelin's message of "Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:50:22 +0100 (BST)")
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Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Earlier, Git interpreted the pattern as a strict prefix, which made
> the operator unsuited in many cases.
>
> Now, the pattern is interpreted as a regular expression (which does not 
> change the behaviour too much, since few onelines contain special regex 
> characters), so that you can say
>
> 	git diff :/.*^Signed-off-by:.Zack.Brown
>
> to see the diff against the most recent reachable commit which was
> signed off by Zack, whose Kernel Cousin I miss very much.
>
> Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

While this perhaps is an improvement and people who are not
interested in paying the price have a choice of not using this
silly syntax, I am moderately annoyed that the syntax does not
define "the most recent reachable" very well.  It is more like
"the first one we happened to pick by diffing from reachable
refs".  It would be more useful if it took "$commit:/$pattern"
form to limit the search among reachable ones from named commit.