Re: Tilde spec - befuzzled

Andreas Ericsson [off-list ref] writes:

On 02/28/2012 10:07 AM, Luke Diamand wrote:

quoted

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.

Perhaps we should reword it as "n-th first-parent ancestor"?  Barring
confusion about the position of the dashes, that leaves little room for
error.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch