Re: [PATCH v3 2/6] commit: add amend suboption to --fixup to create amend! commit

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Mar 1, 2021, 22:47 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cQ9wBLdKqmgjX4eOT6mvukmHXCDicTo5Ud+4VTkzxcXrg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqlfb6mrnx.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

On Mon, Mar 1, 2021 at 5:32 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
> >     if (skip_prefix(msg, "amend:", &arg) ||
> >         skip_prefix(msg, "reword:", &arg)) {
> >         ...
> >     }
>
> You still need to compute "len" because you'd want to tell between
> --fixup="HEAD^{/^area: string}" and --fixup=bogus:HEAD (the latter
> would want to say "no such variant 'bogus' for --fixup", but the
> colon in the former is not the end of the name of variant.

I see what you mean. I vaguely recall quickly scanning over that earlier discussion about ":" being otherwise legitimate when embedded in the argument as you demonstrate, but didn't think about it when reading this code. Perhaps the comment which this code adds:

    * As `amend` suboption contains only alpha
    * character. So check if first non alpha
    * character in fixup_message is ':'.

could be extended a bit to mention that briefly since, without it, the significance of "alpha-only characters followed by colon" is not immediately obvious.