Re: git-rev-parse(1) questions

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Jari Aalto wrote:

quoted

...
    * A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
      colon, followed by a path; this names a blob object in the index
      at the given path. Missing stage number (and the colon that
      follows it) names an stage 0 entry.

You'd never use this unless you're working with a unmerged tree entry, and 
then you can use it for things like

	git diff :1:my-path :2:their-path

if you want to look at the differences between the two blobs that are 
unmerged, and come from different branches (":1:my-path" comes from the 
branch you were merging things into,and the ":2:their-path" comes from the 
branch you were merging from).

That can be useful in the extremely rare case...

A small correction. :1:path comes from the common ancestor,
:2:mine comes from the branch you are on and merging into, and
:3:theirs is what the other branch you were merging from has.

People can see how rarely this is used interactively; even
original authors of git can get it wrong ;-).