Re: [PATCH] Re: [TRIVIAL] Documentation: merge: one <remote> is required

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 12, 2009, 02:48 UTC
Message-ID: <7vy6ppbvdf.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1250002681.2707.2.camel@localhost.localdomain>

Paul Bolle <pebolle@tiscali.nl> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

>> Shoudn't be 
>> 
>>    [-m <msg>] <remote> [<remote>...]
>
> No, since "<remote>..." means one or more instances of the "<remote>"
> option.

Does it really?

After you brought up this "one or more", I re-read the docs your patches touched, thinking that the author might have meant 'zero or more of A' with these '<A>...' notation.

And I realized that they made perfect sense.

In general, you can write:

	<command> ...

and read this as "The <command> can be followed by nothing or something (zero or more) of unspecified kind". If <command> takes only one type of zero or more things, you can _clarify the ellipses_ by prefixing them with what kind of "stuff" you are talking about:

	<command> <remote>...

and read this as "The <command> can be followed by nothing or something (zero or more) of <remote>s".

On the other hand, you can also say (note that the ellipses stand on their own and are not associated with <remote>):

	<command> <remote> ...

and read this as "It takes one <remote> followed by nothing or something (zero or more) of unspecified kind".