On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 09:25:32AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

That's one of the reasons I split this out from patch 2; we can see
exactly what must be done to make each case work. And in fact I had
originally started to write a patch that simply changed t1508 to expect
failure. I could still be persuaded to go that way if anybody feels
strongly.

I do not feel strongly either way myself.  It just is interesting
that the older end of the history is with @{20.years.ago} special
case that is only for time-based query, while the newer end of the
history is with @{0} special case.

I laid out my thinking on the 20.years.ago special case in another
reply, but I wanted to say one more thing. The special case here in
patch 3 is making @{0} work for the empty reflog, but there is no
matching special case for time-based timestamps. If you have an empty
reflog and ask for @{20.years.ago}, you will get the usual "nope, the
reflog is empty" response (as opposed to having a non-empty reflog that
cuts off before 20 years ago).

Obviously we could make that work, but I think the point is that "@{0}"
is special magic for "the current value" in a way that a timestamp isn't
really.

-Peff