Re: [PATCH] rev-parse --parseopt: fix handling of optional arguments

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 16, 2013, 21:40 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqsiw051zc.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20131016085316.GA31314@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> ... But what is the normalized form for an
> optional argument? It either needs to be consistently "sticked" or
> "unsticked", either:
>
>   set -- -S '' --     ;# default
>   set -- -S 'foo' --  ;# not default
>
> or
>
>   set -- -S --    ;# default
>   set -- -Sfoo -- ;# not default
>
> so that reading the normalized form is unambiguous.

The analysis makes sense. Either form do not let you distinguish between the case where the end user wanted to explicitly pass "" as the optional parameter to -S and the case where she gave -S without any optional parameter, though.

Which pretty much agrees with j6t's (and my earlier) comment that there is no way to solve this issue completely, I think.

It is an acceptable compromise to use your suggestion as a solution that works for cases other than passing an explicit empty string as an optional parameter, I would say, if the limitation is clearly documented.

Thanks.