Re: b5227d8 changes meaning of "ls-files -x 'pattern'"

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 09:21:06PM +0530, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:

quoted

Before b5227d8, the following two commands would produce different
outputs (say on git.git):

      git ls-files
      git ls-files -x '*.c'

From b5227d8 onward, they produce the same output.   The second command
no longer excludes *.c files.

I was unable to understand the commit message completely but it sounds
like this was intentionally changed to do this.

Yes, it was intentional. Excludes are about untracked files, not about
restricting parts of the index. The point of the change was to bring
"ls-files" in harmony with other parts of git. For example, prior to

OK; makes sense -- thanks for the explanation.

However, for your use case, I can see the utility of an option to limit
the output of ls-files for a particular invocation. It's just that "-x"
is tied into the excludes mechanism, which doesn't do that.

I would not be opposed to a patch to add an option that means "exclude
these index entries from the output list." And for the sake of backwards

I rather doubt if my C skills extend that far these days; I'll figure out
other ways of doing this if I need it :-)

Thanks again,

Sitaram