Re: [PATCH] merge: allow "-" as a short-hand for "previous branch"

From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Apr 8, 2011, 09:30 UTC
Message-ID: <4D9ED5AC.3050106@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vbp0h63sw.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 08.04.2011 01:26:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Thomas Adam <thomas@xteddy.org> writes:
> 
>> I agree this is is useful, but is there a danger of this being a
>> common typo, and people merging in previous branches a lot more often
>> than they ever intended?  In the case of "git checkout -" that's not
>> as fatal, but if I ever mistype "git merge -" -- I'm now left with an
>> unraveling exercise to do.
> 
> Just like you can checkout the previous branch back if you found you
> checked out a wrong branch by a typo, if you found that you merged a wrong
> branch, you can just reset it away back to ORIG_HEAD, no?
> 
> Or am I missing something more obvious?

Only tests and doc :)

Seriously, I like that. If there are more places where this makes sense (I haven't looked) we might even factor it out. In principle it makes sense everywhere where a branch name makes sense, e.g.:

git branch -D foo #...can't delete the current branch git checkout whatever git branch -D -

In this case, shell history is faster, of course.

Michael