"D. Ben Knoble" <ben.knoble@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> With Git 2.48.1, I observe the following behavior:
>
> - "git ls-files :^:Documentation/RelNotes | grep Rel" yields
> "RelNotes", as expected
It is deliberately confusing to spell ":(exclude)" as ":^:".
> - "git grep squash :^:Documentation/RelNotes" yields the error
>
> fatal: ambiguous argument ':^:Documentation/RelNotes': unknown
> revision or path not in the working tree.
I think if you write it in longhand,
$ git grep squash ':(exclude)Documentation/RelNotes'
you would not see such an error.
The error message comes from setup.c:die_verify_filename(), I think,
and setup.c:looks_like_pathspec() allows the control flow to avoid
calling that filename verification code path. It knows to let the
longhand magic pathspec go, and it may be trivial to teach it a
shorthand magic too, but I offhand do not know the implications of
such a change---there might be unintended consequences.
