From: Martin Langhoff Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 21:06:48 GMT Subject: Re: Automagic `git checkout branchname` mysteriously fails Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20161014205842.GA6350@ikke.info> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 4:58 PM, Kevin Daudt wrote: > Correct, this only works when it's unambiguous what branch you actually > mean. That's not surprising, but there isn't a warning. IMHO, finding several branch matches is a strong indication that it'll be worth reporting to the user that the DWIM machinery got hits, but couldn't work it out. I get that process is not geared towards making a friendly msg easy, but we could print to stderr something like: "branch" matches more than one candidate ref, cannot choose automatically. If you mean to check out a branch, try git branch command. If you mean to check out a file, use -- before the pathname to disambiguate. and then continue with execution. With a bit of wordsmithing, the msg can be made to be helpful in the various failure modes. cheers, m -- martin.langhoff@gmail.com - ask interesting questions ~ http://linkedin.com/in/martinlanghoff - don't be distracted ~ http://github.com/martin-langhoff by shiny stuff