Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add [] as an alias for a reference to the empty tree

Heya,

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:00, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:51:05AM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

quoted

Must it be ALL CAPS? In Mercurial the fairly elegant 'nil' is used for
the empty commit, why can't we do the same?

[Please watch your quoting, which is a bit misleading there].

Apologies, I accidentally removed Junio's attribution line. I fully
intended to reply to both your and Junio's post at the same time :).

I think the intent was that because they clash in the normal refs
namespace, we would set them apart with caps (and we have already
sort-of claimed the all-caps namespace with things like HEAD,
FETCH_HEAD, etc).

While I understand the rationale, (of already having two all-caps
refs), I don't think adding more of them is a good idea. Aesthetically
I think 'nil' does make sense, but I agree that 'worktree' and 'index'
as lower-case names do not.

The point was to make a more obvious and verbose alternative for people
who find "git diff" a little confusing. E.g.:

I don't think that all caps names make for a good solution to that
problem though.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier