expose a helper function peel_to_type().

diff --git a/git-filter-branch.sh b/git-filter-branch.sh
index fbb948d6fd42091acade3fa807d5ff250cea651b..49e13f0bb1ed2bcb6e85455f24dffa912927d67a 100755 (executable)
--- a/git-filter-branch.sh
+++ b/git-filter-branch.sh
@@ -114,7 +114,6 @@ orig_namespace=refs/original/
 force=
 while :
 do
-       test $# = 0 && usage
        case "$1" in
        --)
                shift
@@ -213,7 +212,7 @@ GIT_WORK_TREE=.
 export GIT_DIR GIT_WORK_TREE
 
 # The refs should be updated if their heads were rewritten
-git rev-parse --no-flags --revs-only --symbolic-full-name "$@" |
+git rev-parse --no-flags --revs-only --symbolic-full-name --default HEAD "$@" |
 sed -e '/^^/d' >"$tempdir"/heads
 
 test -s "$tempdir"/heads ||
@@ -277,10 +276,11 @@ while read commit parents; do
                eval "$filter_tree" < /dev/null ||
                        die "tree filter failed: $filter_tree"
 
-               git diff-index -r $commit | cut -f 2- | tr '\012' '\000' | \
-                       xargs -0 git update-index --add --replace --remove
-               git ls-files -z --others | \
-                       xargs -0 git update-index --add --replace --remove
+               (
+                       git diff-index -r --name-only $commit
+                       git ls-files --others
+               ) |
+               git update-index --add --replace --remove --stdin
        fi
 
        eval "$filter_index" < /dev/null ||