Re: [PATCH] show-ref: place angle brackets around variables in usage string

From: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 29, 2015, 21:09 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMMLpeTsL-_e=oGjuqjS5KfBcmd1UKfCOPXmjhaPFv8+qGzRng@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <47B9DE8756F943C0A0985F41D093340F@PhilipOakley>

2015-08-29 4:21 GMT-06:00 Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Should the '<' stdin redirection be shown?
>
> It looks (at first glance) as if this gained a double '< <' at the beginning
> of 'ref-list', rather than being a clean indication of the redirection.
> Perhaps change 'ref-list' to 'ref-list-file' for a slight improvement in
> clarity - this it's only occurance, and the redirection would best match a
> file.

This syntax occurs in three other places in Git:

git cat-file (--batch | --batch-check) [--follow-symlinks] < <list-of-objects>

git check-attr --stdin [-z] [-a | --all | <attr>...] < <list-of-paths>

git hash-object  --stdin-paths < <list-of-paths>

So if we need to say <ref-list-file> for clarity, we should also say <object-list-file> and <path-list-file> for these other commands.

I think the most sane thing to do is to commit this patch as-is, and then someone can submit a separate patch to reword all four usage strings for increased clarity.

-Alex