Re: [PATCH] git-reset.txt: Use commit~1 notation over commit^

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 1, 2010, 22:06 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfwuhtafr.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <877hftuvvz.fsf@picasso.cante.net>

Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> What people appreciate, while learning, is constency. Sticking to one
> notation is better than giving multiple choices. And the "^" isn't
> exactly readable, don't you agree?
>
>     HEAD^^^^^^^^
>
> Right. How many was there again?

There is no question that you need to really count them, and that is why we invented HEAD~8 notation in the first place. It however is wrong to use the above illustration to defend your change that replaces "HEAD^" with "HEAD~1".

The thing is, you need to name/call the previous one a lot more often than you need to call the eighth previous one. The previous one "HEAD~1" is special because it directly relates to the current commit (it is the first parent of the current commit) and that is why people often need to access it.

And "HEAD^" is shorter and much easier to type, and more importantly, it is more often used in the wild, so the readers of the documentation needs to know it anyway to understand what other people do.