From: Sebastian Schuberth Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 08:58:39 GMT Subject: Re: git fsck: unreachable vs. dangling Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <552CD4C8.2020700@drmicha.warpmail.net> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Michael J Gruber wrote: > "to dangle" means "to hang loosely". > > So, in the description above, "A^ dangles from A loosely" because it > hangs from A (you can reach it from A) but loosely, because it would > "drop" if A gets dropped and A is "likely" to be dropped (because it is > unreachable by refs). But A^ is not dangling in our terminology. > > If you *reverse the arrows*, i.e. consider A^ pointing to A, it becomes > more apparent that A is dangling: it is an unreferenced leaf node. That's exactly what confused me. In the very literal sense, something can only "hang loosely", i.e. dangle, if it's only tied at *one* end, and that's the case for A (which is only connected to A^) but not for A^ (which is connected to its parent, and A). Especially when talking about A as a "leaf" node, like in the leaf of a natural tree, I would think that A is dangling. -- Sebastian Schuberth