Re: [RFC] get_sha1() shorthands for blob/tree objects

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Apr 19, 2006, 00:44 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0604181735480.3701@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vy7y2csv8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> 
> Yes, I wanted to do this myself for a while.  The only issue I
> might have is what the separator character between rev and path
> should be.

I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but using ':' not only is pretty visually pleasing, it also means that shell completion automatically works at least on bash, even without any git-specific completion rules.

That's not true for a lot of other special characters: colon really is special, exactly because it has been used for things like PATH separators, etc.

I'm a total filename completion junkie - I simply cannot type in a filename any more. I'll literally press <tab> to complete even short filenames, just because it gives me that nice confirmation of the existence of the filename (ie I've typed it all in, and the <tab> adds the space after the filename).

So to me, ':' is just clearly superior. I can't think of any other separator that works with filename completion and has no shell issues, _and_ looks logical.

And I thought we already disallowed ':' in branch names because cogito uses them for the strange <rev>:<rev> syntax..

		Linus