Re: Support of '^' as alias for 'HEAD^'

From: Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) <zeeshanak@gnome.org>
Date: Jul 14, 2012, 20:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAAa3hFOv39DhuEDTyJUm1pzB-X1gBiV8FXuqW6TidOtQw9CUng@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vr4se5bg4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 11:34 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> 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.

What about '^' and '^^' that I suggested?

>> While I see your "~<N>" much distasteful compared to "^", you still
>
> s/dist/less dist/; sorry ;-)

Why?

>> 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.

That would kinda beat the purpose I think, would be nice to just type 1 key rather than 3 to refer to HEAD (2 keys would still be good enough IMHO).

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124