Subject: Re: [PATCH] diff,difftool: Don't use the {0,2} notation in usage strings

From: Štěpán Němec <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:26:14 +0100

Jeff King <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

>> 	usage: git diff <options> <rev>{0,2} -- <path>*

[...]

> [1] If we are on a quest to remove <rev>{0,2}, this is one other spot to
>     do it.

That's already included in the patch.

I think this thread already has nothing to do with the purpose of the
patch, though. I find your suggestion that <commit>{0,2} better conveys
some information about git-diff's operation modes than [<commit>
[<commit>]] does (which seems to have been your starting point) rather
far-fetched.

Note that I do not feel strongly about removing the {M,N} notation (I
expressed my opinion in the thread already[1]), but I see the notation
problem as orthogonal to the issues you are discussing here.

So AIUI the patch can still be applied and we/you can then work on
improving the usage string in other ways -- providing that we agree that
the {M,N} notation should go, of course, which we apparently still
don't?

In any case this seems to be less and less my itch to scratch, so I'm
not sure I'm going to be of much help in this discussion. The thing I
need to know for the CodingGuidelines patch is whether we're going to
preserve and encourage the {M,N} usage or not (so please let's arrive to
some conclusion on that matter -- I waited for several days before
sending the updated version and nobody chimed in, so I assumed nobody
other than Mark and Sverre really cared). Although, that's actually
somewhat orthogonal, too -- we can always re-add the {M,N} subsection
later.

Thanks,

  Štěpán

[1]
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/158467/focus=160330