# Re: \[PATCH 1/1\] ls-refs.c: minimize number of refs visited

- From: Jeff King \<hidden\>
- Date: 2021-01-19 22:22:26 
- List: git
- Page: https://ratatoskr.run/git/2021/01/7873103
- Thread: https://ratatoskr.run/git/2021/01/7873058/t.md

```text
On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 04:59:18PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> > > What does "delimited by /" mean?
> > 
> > Ah, I just meant that it looks for the longest common prefix where it
> > will only split at '/' characters. But, that's not right at all:
> > find_longest_prefixes_1() will happily split anywhere there is a
> > difference.
> 
> Right. We thought in early revisions of the ref-filter work that we
> might have to split on path components, but it turns out that the
> underlying ref code is happy to take arbitrary prefixes. And it's that
> code which defines our strategy; Even if the ls-refs code wanted to
> allow only full path components, it should be using the limiting from
> for_each_ref_in() only as an optimization, and applying its own
> filtering to the output.

Having now looked carefully at the ls-refs code, it's a pure
prefix-match, too. So I think we _could_ rely on for_each_fullref_in()
returning us the correct full results, and not checking it further in
send_ref(). But I kind of like keeping it there as an extra check (and
one which could in theory grow more logic later).

-Peff
```