From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:20:39 GMT
Subject: Re: Tilde spec - befuzzled
Message-ID: <7vaa42zrw8.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <87zkc38a3v.fsf@thomas.inf.ethz.ch>

Thomas Rast <trast@inf.ethz.ch> writes:

>>> '<rev>{tilde}<n>', e.g. 'master{tilde}3'::
>>> A suffix '{tilde}<n>' to a revision parameter means the commit
>>> object that is the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named
>>> commit object, following only the first parents.
>>> 
>>> Hang on, *grand*-parents?
>>> ...
>
> Perhaps we should reword it as "n-th first-parent ancestor"?  Barring
> confusion about the position of the dashes, that leaves little room for
> error.

I think we could either go "easier to read but not precise"

	... that is the <n>th generation (grand-)parent of ...

or "may sound scary but correct"

	the ancestor reached by walking the first-parent chain <n> times

I am not sure which bucket "n-th first-parent ancestor" falls into.