From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 21:26:41 GMT
Subject: Re: Support of '^' as alias for 'HEAD^'
Message-ID: <7vmx32590u.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAAa3hFOv39DhuEDTyJUm1pzB-X1gBiV8FXuqW6TidOtQw9CUng@mail.gmail.com>

"Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)" <zeeshanak@gnome.org> writes:

> What about '^' and '^^' that I suggested?
>
>>> While I see your "~<N>" much distasteful compared to "^", you still
>>
>> s/dist/less dist/; sorry ;-)
>
> Why?

That "^^" is the most important reason why your "^ is the same as
HEAD^" is flawed, and goes against my taste.

Think what "log ^^ origin" would mean.  Is it "log ^HEAD^ origin"?
Is it "log HEAD^^ origin"?  They mean totally different things.

Compared to that, at least ~<n> does not have such ambiguity within
the context of Git (having to quote is an ambiguity within the
context of using Git with shells that support dirstacks in their
tilde expansion).