From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 20:17:29 GMT
Subject: Re: Support of '^' as alias for 'HEAD^'
Message-ID: <7vzk725c86.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <loom.20120714T114718-783@post.gmane.org>

Stefan Näwe <stefan.naewe@gmail.com> writes:

> Zeeshan Ali (Khattak <zeeshanak <at> gnome.org> writes:
>> 
>> Many times I want to refer to 'HEAD^', 'HEAD^^' and sometimes even
>> further up the tree. It would be really nice if I didn't have to type
>> 'HEAD^' but could only type '^'. Bash completion make things easier
>> but it automatically inserts a space immediately after HEAD so you
>> have to hit backspace. I think this change would be good in general
>> anyway.
>
> Or even '~1', '~3'.

"^" has a problem when used with other things (does "log ^^2
origin" mean "log HEAD^2..origin"?  Or "log HEAD^^2 origin"), so I
do not think it would never fly as an abbreviated syntax.

While I see your "~<N>" much distasteful compared to "^", you still
need to be a bit more careful when analysing the benefit of such an
abbreviation.  To shells used by many people, these mean tilde
expansion ~<N> to refer to elements on the dirstack and you need to
quote, perhaps like \~3.