Re: [PATCH v2] gitcli: tweak "man gitcli" for clarity

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, Jeff King wrote:

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 10:45:52PM +0100, Kevin Daudt wrote:

quoted

quoted

- * Without disambiguating `--`, Git makes a reasonable guess, but errors
-   out and asking you to disambiguate when ambiguous.  E.g. if you have a
+ * Without a disambiguating `--`, Git makes a reasonable guess, but can
+   error out, asking you to disambiguate when ambiguous.  E.g. if you have a

'Can' error out implies that it sometimes would not error out when there
is ambiguity. Are there situation where git does not error out in that
case?

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.

  ok, i'll give this another try, given that there are two independent
points to be made here:

1) even without the "--", git can generally parse the command and do
the right thing (or do a *valid* thing, given its heuristics)

2) occasionally, without the "--", the command is really and truly
ambiguous, at which point git will fail and tell you to disambiguate

  not the wording i will use, but can we agree that those are the two
points to be made here?

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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