Re: [PATCH] Documentation: update-index: -z applies also to --index-info

Bert Wesarg <bert.wesarg@googlemail.com> writes:

Hmm, this requires | to bind tighter than [] around -z, but that is a bit counterintuitive.

Also, you can put -z much earlier, e.g. "update-index -z --add --stdin", and your version gives a false impression that we do not allow that.

Writing it as "[-z] [--stdin | --index-info]" would be much easier to read, even though it won't convey that -z will be no-op unless we are reading from the standard input, either with --stdin or --index-info.

I actually think we can easily lift the "must be at the end" limitation from both codepaths.

Move the --stdin codepath to a separate helper like read_index_info(), remove the limitation, and add a new limitation that --stdin/--index-info can be given only once (as the reader will read thru EOF and the second call to the reader won't help us). And do the reading after processing all the command line stuff (i.e. move read_index_info() call after the option parsing loop), to allow "update-index --stdin --add hello.c" to add new paths read from standard input and also hello.c was given from the command line.

Wouldn't it make much more sense to spend brain cycles to write and review such a patch, rather than documenting an unnecessary limitation?

Hmm?