Re: git diff --patience

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 7:15 AM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> wrote:
> An interesting exercise it so think about what
> real-life lines you could have which would have multiple occurrences
> in this pattern, and think about whether you would then prefer the
> --patience output, especially if this were part of a larger file.

The linux-kernel mailing list had examples of this occurring in real
life too. In real C programs function signatures usually end up being
the unique lines which is what you want but it can happen that
surprising lines are unique. Even braces can be unique if a given
indentation level is only used once.

The discussion basically convinced me that using uniqueness alone is a
bad idea but that the basic idea of trying to identify the important
lines is a fine idea. It's just that uniqueness turns out to be a
relatively weak signal for interesting lines. Linus suggested
line-length but it's pretty debatable which is better.

--
greg