Subject: Re: Tilde spec - befuzzled

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:50:12 +0100

On 02/28/2012 10:07 AM, Luke Diamand wrote:
> The documentation for caret and tilde specs is making my head hurt, even though they always _do_ exactly what I want. And I thought I understood them until I read more carefully.
> 
> A suffix '{caret}' to a revision parameter means the first parent of
> that commit object. '{caret}<n>' means the <n>th parent (i.e.
> '<rev>{caret}'
> 
> So far, so good.
> 
> '<rev>{tilde}<n>', e.g. 'master{tilde}3'::
> A suffix '{tilde}<n>' to a revision parameter means the commit
> object that is the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named
> commit object, following only the first parents.
> 
> Hang on, *grand*-parents?
> 

Replace "grand-parent" with "ancestor" and your head might hurt a
little less. Caret only ever describes parent, while tilde can
describe either parent or n'th generation grand-parent. Since parent
and grand-parent are all ancestors, that would be a better term.

I believe this stems from the fact that most git-gurus use a single
caret to specify 'parent' and only go to the tilde when they want
grandparents. It might be because caret was implemented first, or
because of english keyboard layout. On swedish keyboards, using tilde
is far more convenient than using caret, so that's what I mostly use
when I want the parent of a single-parent commit (it requires only
one hand and no thumb-acrobatics even on my laptop).

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

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