Re: [PATCH 0/4] grep: add more information to hunk separators

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 07:14, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Mark Lodato [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Originally, I had envisioned also moving the function name (`-p') to the hunk
header, similar to the diff context line.  For example:

    -- git.c:570 -- int main(int argc, char argv)
                    printf("usage: %s\n\n", git_usage_string);
                    list_common_cmds_help();
                    printf("\n%s\n", git_more_info_string);

After implementing this feature, I was not happy with the result and
subsequently removed it.  To me, the output was too cluttered and the line
number was ambigous.  For example, in the above, it is not obvious to me that
line 570 is the "printf" line and not the "int main" line.  Still, if you
would like to see the patch to implement this feature, please let me know.

The worst part of all of the above is that the output becomes utterly
ambiguous and the reader cannot tell if "-- git.c..." came because the
file had such a line that begin with two dashes in it and grep found it,
or it is your output format embellishment. It is obvious that these are
not meant to be machine parseable, but if the goal is to make the output
more useful to the humans, then it may be a better approach to come up
with a front end that reads our machine readable output and shows output
with its own embellishments. You could even make it an interactive front
end.

FYI, I once posted a git-gui grep prototype:

[ref]

I have since added it to git-gui, see bw/master~2 'git-gui: add grep
tab' in http://repo.or.cz/w/git-gui/bertw.git.

Bert

In other words, I am not yet convinced this belongs to "git grep" proper.