Re: [PATCH 0/6] Introduce pathspec struct

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

 $ git log --exclude "Doc*" master..pu -- '*.txt'
 $ git grep --exclude "t/" -e 'test .*-L' -- '*.sh'

I was writing "but you would lose the ability to mix negative and
positive pathspecs together, something like 'exclude Documentation
except Documentation/technical'",...

I think that is way overengineered.  We _could_ make the expressions
arbitrarily complex and hard to use by using irregular syntax tricks, but
let's not go there.  Let's just keep things simple and usable instead.

 * Without pathspec, everything is included;
 * pathspecs will filter everything that do not match;
 * --exclude also filters what matches them from the remainder.

So...

$ git log --exclude Documentation --exclude "!Documentation/technical"
master..pu -- '*.txt'

does not sound too twisted to understand (I hope).

...I would not vote for this.

... If David
needs "git grep --exclude-dir" now, he should keep working on
builtin/grep.c as he's doing now (maybe change --exclude-dir to
--exclude).

That's not what I am saying.

Because --exclude-dir is a special case of --exclude, it would be an
efficient solution _if_ we can externally keep the command line option
compatible with GNU grep as a syntax sugar, and turn it into something
else internally that can be passed to your "pathspec with negative"
engine.

..., but his work on the
command line interface _and tests_ won't be wasted.

Yup.