Re: [PATCH 2/3] xdiff: -W: include immediately preceding non-empty lines in context

["René Scharfe" <l.s.r@web.de>]

Am 13.01.2017 um 17:15 schrieb Vegard Nossum:
> When using -W to include the whole function in the diff context, you
> are typically doing this to be able to review the change in its entirety
> within the context of the function. It is therefore almost always
> desirable to include any comments that immediately precede the function.
>
> This also the fixes the case for C where the declaration is split across
> multiple lines (where the first line of the declaration would not be
> included in the output), e.g.:
>
> 	void
> 	dummy(void)
> 	{
> 		...
> 	}
>

That's true, but I'm not sure "non-empty line before function line" is 
good enough a definition for desirable lines.  It wouldn't work for 
people who don't believe in empty lines.  Or for those that put a blank 
line between comment and function.  (I have an opinion on such habits, 
but git diff should probably stay neutral.)  And that's just for C code; 
I have no idea how this heuristic would hold up for other file types 
like HTML.

We can identify function lines with arbitrary precision (with a 
xfuncname regex, if needed), but there is no accurate way to classify 
lines as comments, or as the end of functions.  Adding optional regexes 
for single- and multi-line comments would help, at least for C.

René