From: Sverre Rabbelier Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 11:00:17 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add [] as an alias for a reference to the empty tree Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20100510100050.GB2098@coredump.intra.peff.net> Heya, On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:00, Jeff King wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:51:05AM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote: >> Must it be ALL CAPS? In Mercurial the fairly elegant 'nil' is used for >> the empty commit, why can't we do the same? > > [Please watch your quoting, which is a bit misleading there]. Apologies, I accidentally removed Junio's attribution line. I fully intended to reply to both your and Junio's post at the same time :). > I think the intent was that because they clash in the normal refs > namespace, we would set them apart with caps (and we have already > sort-of claimed the all-caps namespace with things like HEAD, > FETCH_HEAD, etc). While I understand the rationale, (of already having two all-caps refs), I don't think adding more of them is a good idea. Aesthetically I think 'nil' does make sense, but I agree that 'worktree' and 'index' as lower-case names do not. > The point was to make a more obvious and verbose alternative for people > who find "git diff" a little confusing. E.g.: I don't think that all caps names make for a good solution to that problem though. -- Cheers, Sverre Rabbelier