From: Junio C Hamano Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 22:59:09 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] Add new @ shortcut for HEAD Message-ID: <7v4nem488y.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Felipe Contreras writes: > Exactly, because ref@something is used for operations on a ref. If > 'ref' is missing, it only makes sense to use HEAD (or something like > that), and if 'something' is missing, it only makes sense to make it a > no-op, but since we don't want to forbid refs with names like > 'master@'. That's the reason why '@' makes sense, and not any other > character. Yes. My typo made it look as if I meant to say '@' was a bad choice, but we are in agreement that '@' is better than any other random choice of single punctuation letter. It is just the "strip this, strip that" explanation, which is not technically correct, does _not_ have to be our justification for picking '@' as a short-hand for HEAD.