Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:
I read the rest of the thread, and I think the question here is not
about Git's behavior, but about parsing this sentence.
Without a "--" Git can sometimes do what you want. Or it may error out,
if what you asked for is ambiguous. And that sentence is trying to cover
those cases separately, and the "can" only applies to the ambiguous
case.
It's pretty clear to me as it is, but maybe we can write it differently.
Like:
Without a disambiguating `--`, Git makes a reasonable guess. If it
cannot guess (because your request is ambiguous), then it will error
out.
Splitting it into two sentences like you did makes it even clearer,
I would think.