Subject: Re: misleading diff-hunk header

From: Tim Chase <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2012 07:56:06 -0500

On 08/24/12 23:29, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Tim Chase <[email-masked]> writes:
>> If the documented purpose of "diff -p" (and by proxy
>> diff.{type}.xfuncname) is to show the name of the *function*
>> containing the changed lines,....
> 
> Yeah, the documentation is misleading, but I do not offhand think of
> a better phrasing. Perhaps you could send in a patch to improve it.
> 
> How does GNU manual explain the option?

Tersely. :-)

       -p  --show-c-function
              Show which C function each change is in.

And that's it.  To describe the current behavior, it might be better
written as "Find and show the first function definition prior to the
hunk".  The code in diff(1) actually just uses the regexp something
like "^[a-z]" which happens to find function definitions, but can
also find module-level variable definitions, structs, etc.

-tkc