view mercurial/help/patterns.txt @ 11322:3d6915f5a2bb

improve --branch processing (and differentiate from # syntax)

Previously #foo and --branch foo were handled identically.
The behavior of #foo hasn't changed, but --branch now works like this:

1) If branchmap is not supported on the remote, the operation fails.
2) If branch is '.', substitute with branch of the working dir parent.
3) If branch exists remotely, its heads are expanded.
4) Otherwise, the operation fails.

Tests have been added for the new cases.

Mercurial accepts several notations for identifying one or more files
at a time.

By default, Mercurial treats filenames as shell-style extended glob
patterns.

Alternate pattern notations must be specified explicitly.

To use a plain path name without any pattern matching, start it with
``path:``. These path names must completely match starting at the
current repository root.

To use an extended glob, start a name with ``glob:``. Globs are rooted
at the current directory; a glob such as ``*.c`` will only match files
in the current directory ending with ``.c``.

The supported glob syntax extensions are ``**`` to match any string
across path separators and ``{a,b}`` to mean "a or b".

To use a Perl/Python regular expression, start a name with ``re:``.
Regexp pattern matching is anchored at the root of the repository.

Plain examples::

  path:foo/bar   a name bar in a directory named foo in the root
                 of the repository
  path:path:name a file or directory named "path:name"

Glob examples::

  glob:*.c       any name ending in ".c" in the current directory
  *.c            any name ending in ".c" in the current directory
  **.c           any name ending in ".c" in any subdirectory of the
                 current directory including itself.
  foo/*.c        any name ending in ".c" in the directory foo
  foo/**.c       any name ending in ".c" in any subdirectory of foo
                 including itself.

Regexp examples::

  re:.*\.c$      any name ending in ".c", anywhere in the repository