Depends entirely on what types of globs are used and how expensive it is to traverse directory hierarchy that is not relevant. For diffs, the ability to exclude depth-first traversal of unnecessary parts of the working tree seemed like a big win, particularly since a very narrow diff (i.e. one file) is pretty common. For refs, it is hard for me to imagine that it will make much of a difference, but I don't know what a "lot of refs" means in the real world.