Re: [PATCH][Outreachy] branch -D: allow - as abbreviation of @{-1}

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 21, 2016, 17:47 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtwjzn2nu.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqfuvju4km.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

> But I'm not sure how often people want to delete (force-delete according
> to your message) the branch they just come from.

One that I heard was this sequence:

    $ git checkout -b work master
    $ work work work ...
    $ git checkout master
    $ git merge work
    $ git branch -d work

where their argument was that they are done with the work branch, and it no longer is needed.

As you may be able to guess, I don't personally subscribe to that workflow (I'd keep the topic a lot longer, until the result of the merge is proven to be good in the field), but probably these people are more perfect developers than I am ;-)

> It might be less
> dangerous to give incentive to the user to spell the branch name
> completely to avoid mistake. As analogy, my shell knows "cd -" but I
> can't "rm -fr -" and I'm happy about it.

That is indeed an interesting analogy.