pathspec: correct an empty string used as a pathspec element

Pathspecs with only negative elements did not work with some
commands that pass the pathspec along to a subprocess.  For
instance,

    $ git add -p -- ':!*.txt'

should add everything except for paths ending in ".txt", but it gets
complaint from underlying "diff-index" and aborts.

We used to error out when a pathspec with only negative elements in
it, like the one in the above example.  Later, 859b7f1d (pathspec:
don't error out on all-exclusionary pathspec patterns, 2017-02-07)
updated the logic to add an empty string as an extra element.  The
intention was to let the extra element to match everything and let
the negative ones given by the user to subtract from it.

At around the same time, we were migrating from "an empty string is
a valid pathspec element that matches everything" to "either a dot
or ":/" is used to match all, and an empty string is rejected",
between d426430e (pathspec: warn on empty strings as pathspec,
2016-06-22) and 9e4e8a64 (pathspec: die on empty strings as
pathspec, 2017-06-06).  I think 9e4e8a64, which happened long after
859b7f1d happened, was not careful enough to turn the empty string
859b7f1d added to either a dot or ":/".

A care should be taken as the definition of "everything" depends on
subcommand.  For the purpose of "add -p", adding a "." to add
everything in the current directory is the right thing to do.  But
for some other commands, ":/" (i.e. really really everything, even
things outside the current subdirectory) is the right choice.

We would break commands in a big way if we get this wrong, so add a
handful of test pieces to make sure the resulting code still
excludes the paths that are expected and includes "everything" else.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/pathspec.c b/pathspec.c
index 7a229d8..2557338 100644
--- a/pathspec.c
+++ b/pathspec.c
@@ -609,7 +609,7 @@ void parse_pathspec(struct pathspec *pathspec,
 	 */
 	if (nr_exclude == n) {
 		int plen = (!(flags & PATHSPEC_PREFER_CWD)) ? 0 : prefixlen;
-		init_pathspec_item(item + n, 0, prefix, plen, "");
+		init_pathspec_item(item + n, 0, prefix, plen, ".");
 		pathspec->nr++;
 	}