Re: [PATCH v2] diff: ensure consistent diff behavior with -I<regex> across output formats
From: Lidong Yan <hidden>
Date: 2025-08-04 01:56:39
Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:
Lidong Yan [off-list ref] writes:quoted
`git diff -I<regex>` option is inconsistently applied across various output formats. In some cases, files would appear in the `--name-only` output but not in the accompanying `--stat` or `-p` outputs, despite the user explicitly requesting to ignore certain changes using `-I<regex>`. Not only for `-I<regex>`, but this inconsistency also exists for other output formats that have `.diff_from_content` set (e.g. `-w`, `--ignore-space-at-eol` and `--ignore-space-change`).Perhaps the above (and code, like the name of the helper functions and possibly the name of the new file) should be updated to place much stress on -I<regex>, as "ignore-regex" is not any more special than other things that flips .diff_from_content bit in this new iteration of the patch.
I will replace ‘-I<regex>’ to ‘options that set .diff_from_content’.
I do not quite get why ignore_match() has to know so much about how the real code in diff.c that implements -I<regex> works, compared to the illustration of "here is how to do it" Peff posted, though. It somehow feels too much duplicated code.
I did copy some code from diffcore-pickaxe.c. I will use Peff's code in the next patch and try to refactor diff_flush() to make the code simpler. Though the reason I match the regular expression in ignore_match() is that I want to return early as soon as an unmatched change is found. And indeed, it's not worth writing the duplicated code for this unknown performance benefit. Thanks, Lidong