Re: [PATCH] Fix capitalization of "renamelimit" in docs to agree with code

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 19, 2011, 01:02 UTC
Message-ID: <7vsjkhnzkt.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4EEE86AC.2030802@pcharlan.com>

Pete Harlan <pgit@pcharlan.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Signed-off-by: Pete Harlan <pgit@pcharlan.com>
> ---
> The documentation and bash-completion have always capitalized
> "renamelimit" as "renameLimit".  The code has always lowercased the
> whole name.  Repair the docs.

Please don't do this.

Exactly because we treat the variable name part (and the top-level section part of three-part names) case insensitively, the code lowercases before comparing as an implementation detail.

However, you will be naming the same variable whether you spell it using all lowercase, or using camelCase (i.e. it does not really matter what case the user uses). The camelCase makes it slightly easier to see where the word boundaries are than alllowercase, and that is why we try to use it in our documentes, which is after all meant to be read by humans.

I would also appreciate if people tried not to overflow my mailbox with an incorrect patch that hasn't been discussed and hasn't seen concensus on the list that the particular change is a good thing to do, unless the patch is about an area that I am an area expert (you can see who the area experts are by asking "git shortlog --no-merges -n" or "git blame").

Thanks.