Re: [PATCH] Re: [TRIVIAL] Documentation: merge: one <remote> is required

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 12, 2009, 10:19 UTC
Message-ID: <m31vnhpc5v.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <7vy6ppbvdf.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 30 quoted lines

> Paul Bolle <pebolle@tiscali.nl> writes:
> 
>>> Shoudn't be 
>>> 
>>>    [-m <msg>] <remote> [<remote>...]
>>
>> No, since "<remote>..." means one or more instances of the "<remote>"
>> option.  
> 
> Does it really?
> 
> After you brought up this "one or more", I re-read the docs your patches
> touched, thinking that the author might have meant 'zero or more of A'
> with these '<A>...'  notation.
> 
> And I realized that they made perfect sense.
> 
> In general, you can write:
> 
> 	<command> ...
> 
> and read this as "The <command> can be followed by nothing or something
> (zero or more) of unspecified kind".  If <command> takes only one type of
> zero or more things, you can _clarify the ellipses_ by prefixing them with
> what kind of "stuff" you are talking about:
> 
> 	<command> <remote>...
> 
> and read this as "The <command> can be followed by nothing or something
> (zero or more) of <remote>s".

I would have thought that it makes more sense to have

  <something>...

for one or more, and

  [<something>... ]

for zero or more (optional one or more).

Documentation/DocumentationLanguage, anyone? ;-))))

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git