Re: Counter-intuitive result from diff -C --stat

Mike Hommey [off-list ref] writes:

Hi,

So I was checking out differences between two branches, accounting for
file moves with -C, and was surprised by the number of insertions and
deletions that it indicated, because it was telling me I had removed
more than I added, which I really don't think is true.

I took a closer look, and what happens is that I had a lot of stuff in
a __init__.py file that I moved to another file, while keeping a now
new, empty, __init__.py file.

Which means while diff counts the deletions from __init__.py, it doesn't
count the additions from the move because it is a move, leading to a
counter-intuitive result.

Intuition is in the eyes of observer.  

A pairing of the original and the result you saw might be not very
useful (which I have no opinion on), but in the context of the
chosen pairing of the original and the result, in order to produce
the final result, you started from a copy of the original and
removed quite a lot while adding just a bit, so what you saw was an
outcome that was deliberately designed.