Re: [PATCHv3 3/4] git-status: show short sequencer state

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 14, 2012, 13:29 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy5i4b9d8.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <50A2DCD7.4050909@cisco.com>

Phil Hord <hordp@cisco.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

>> Do you think '--tree-state' is an acceptable switch or do you have other
>> suggestions?
>
> I've been calling these 'tokens' myself.  A token is a word-or-phrase I
> can parse easily with the default $IFS, for simpler script handling.

That name may be good for variables, but it is good only because you as the implementor know what purpose the tokens are used for. Instead of having to call them with a longer name, e.g. "state tokens", only because you know that these tokens represent tree-wide (as opposed to per-file) state, you can call them "tokens" in your implementation (and in your head) without confusing yourself.

To the end users who should not care about the implementation detail, it is not a good name at all. The UI should surface the purpose, i.e. what these tokens are used for, (e.g. to represent tree-wide state) more than the fact that you happened to represent them with a single short word (i.e. "token").

So --show-tree-state, --include-tree-state-in-the-output or something along that line that tells the user what the option is about is more preferable than --token. After all, you may want to use tokens to represent different kind of information in a later topic that is not about a tree-wide state, and you will regret that you used --token for this particular feature at that time.