Re: "git pull . <branch>" versus "git merge <branch>"

>> The manpages seem to be making somewhat of a point of mentioning "git
>> pull . <branch>" as the way to merge a local branch into the current
>> one but a simple "git merge <branch>" seems to work well. Is there a
>> difference?
> 
> There isn't any.
> 
> "git pull . this_branch" is just a natural and logical consequence that
> you can fetch and merge a branch B from remote U with "git pull $U $B".
> 
> "git merge that_branch" exists and useful because people on average merge
> local branches more than they fetch and merge from remote repository.