Re: [TOY PATCH] git wrapper: show similar command names for an unknown command

From: Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 7, 2008, 07:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20080607072721.GA3347@steel.home>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0806050747000.21190@racer>

Johannes Schindelin, Thu, Jun 05, 2008 08:48:40 +0200:

Show 12 quoted lines

> A typical output would now look like this:
> 
> 	$ git reabse
> 	git: 'reabse' is not a git-command. See 'git --help'.
> 
> 	Did you mean one of these?
> 		rebase
> 		merge-base
> 		rev-parse
> 		remote
> 		rerere
>

That's really cool :) And I find it useful (and already applied it to my tree). For me, it works like a simple reminder about what I was about to do. Helps when working on many things at the same time (typical typo: mrge. And your patch shows it as the first hit).

BTW, you probably want to restrict the number of lines output. For instance, "git ma" (am, printed correctly in the first line) lists around 30 commands, which scrolls clear a 25 line terminal and is a lot of output anyway. I tried it with at most 5 hints:

diff --git a/help.c b/help.c
index ac29225..765eed8 100644
--- a/help.c
+++ b/help.c
@@ -640,7 +640,7 @@ static int levenshtein_compare(const void *p1, const void *p2)
 
 void help_unknown_cmd(const char *cmd)
 {
-	int i, header_shown = 0;
+	int i, header_shown = 0, listed = 0;
 
 	fprintf(stderr, "git: '%s' is not a git-command. See 'git --help'.\n", cmd);
 
@@ -667,6 +667,8 @@ void help_unknown_cmd(const char *cmd)
 			header_shown = 1;
 		}
 		fprintf(stderr, "\t%s\n", main_cmds.names[i]->name);
+		if (++listed >= 5)
+			break;
 	}
 
 	exit(1);