From: Nicolas Sebrecht <nicolas.s.dev@gmx.fr>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:29:24 GMT
Subject: [PATCH] Re: [TRIVIAL] Documentation: merge: one <remote> is required
Message-ID: <20090812132924.GA28345@vidovic>
In-Reply-To: <m31vnhpc5v.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

The 12/08/09, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
> > After you brought up this "one or more", I re-read the docs your patches
> > touched, thinking that the author might have meant 'zero or more of A'
> > with these '<A>...'  notation.
> > 
> > And I realized that they made perfect sense.

This was my initial thought but...

> I would have thought that it makes more sense to have
> 
>   <something>...
> 
> for one or more, and
> 
>   [<something>... ]
> 
> for zero or more (optional one or more).

...their sense is what Posix states:

  Ellipses ( "..." ) are used to denote that one or more occurrences of an
  operand are allowed. When an option or an operand followed by ellipses
  is enclosed in brackets, zero or more options or operands can be
  specified. The form:

  utility_name [-g option_argument]...[operand...]

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap12.html#tag_12_01
(& 12.1.9)


-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht