Re: Weird behavior of git rev-parse

> Yakup Akbay <yakbay@ubicom.com> writes:
>
>   
>> Then I've tried
>>
>>    $ git rev-parse -'hi, this is a test!'
>>
>> the output is:
>>
>>    -hi, this is a test!
>>
>> Is this an expected behavior?
>>     
>
> Absolutely.  rev-parse was originally written as a way for Porcelain
> scripts to sift parameters into four different categories.
>
>  * options and non-options (that's two)
>
>  * args meant for rev-list and others (that's another two)
>
> Multiplying two x two gives you four combinations.
>
> Because you are not giving options like --revs-only, --no-revs, --flags,
> nor --no-flags, rev-parse outputs everything.  You can try these:
>
> $ git rev-parse --no-flags -'Hi'
> $ git rev-parse --no-revs HEAD
> $ git rev-parse --flags --no-revs -Hi HEAD
>   

>> Another questions is, usage is printed if you omit the commit id in
>> git rev-list (E.g. `git rev-list -2`). Is there a reason why HEAD is
>> not taken as the default?
>>     
>
> The reason is because that is the way it has been, that is the way it is,
> and changing it will break existing behaviour and scripts.  In other
> words, it is a historical accident without any deep logic.
>
> Besides, "git rev-list" is a plumbing and didn't necessarily want a
> user-friendliness niceties such as "defaulting to X when nothing is
> given".
>
>