From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2015 21:30:14 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] date: make "local" orthogonal to date format
Message-ID: <20150902213013.GB21612@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq37ywoh0x.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 10:41:34AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > +	/* historical alias */
> > +	if (!strcmp(format, "local"))
> > +		format = "default-local";
> > +
> > +	mode->type = parse_date_type(format, &p);
> > +	mode->local = 0;
> > +
> > +	if (skip_prefix(p, "-local", &p)) {
> > +		if (mode->type == DATE_RELATIVE)
> > +			die("relative-local date format is nonsensical");
> > +		mode->local = 1;
> > +	}
> 
> I notice that we give something funny like this:
> 
>     $ git show --date=short-locale
>     fatal: unknown date-mode modifier: e

Yeah, that's not ideal.

> What is the intention here?  In other words, what kind of things can
> plausibly follow "--date=short-local" in enhanced versions of Git in
> the future?  "--date=short-local:some other magic"?

I had assumed it would be "short-local-othermagic", since ":" is already
the separator for "format:". But I admit I have no idea what other
modifiers would be interesting.

I think the error message would be a lot nicer if we indicate that "-"
is syntactically interesting, and say:

  fatal: unknown date-mode modifier: locale

-Peff