Re: ref name troubles, was Re: [PATCH v2] Introduce %<branch> as shortcut to the tracked branch

From: Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Mar 20, 2009, 00:40 UTC
Message-ID: <20090320004029.GX23521@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0903200137230.10279@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> On Fri, 20 Mar 2009, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> > Just try this:
> > 
> > 	$ git checkout -b %helloworld
> 
> It gets worse.  Much worse.
> 
> Try this (triggered by a comment by Ilari on IRC):
> 
> 	$ git checkout -b '@{1}'
> 
> That _works_! WTH?

'@' is not reserved. Neither is '{' or '}'. Neither is the combination.

Waaaaaay back when I added reflog query syntax I tried to use only '@', people with branch names like 'foo@bar' made a point that they didn't want to reserve it. We stuck the {} in as a "highly unlikely to conflict with a branch name" and others pointed out most shells will do fun things with those, but we kept it to avoid ambiguous meanings of "foo@noon" when foo@noon is already a branch.

Fast-forward more than 2 years, and the "@{...}" syntax is quite widely used, perhaps more so than "@" in a branch name. But its still not reserved.

So yea, you can create a branch named "foo@{1}".

$ git branch foo@{1}
$ git branch
  cache-walk
  foo@{1}
  master
* mergebase-bug
  mw/blame
  rr/compareeditor
  transport-mirror
  worktree-api
  worktree-edit

Yay.

-- 
Shawn.