Re: [PATCH] checkout: disambiguate dwim tracking branches and local files

Duy Nguyen [off-list ref] writes:

Is it that different between an exact path name and a pathspec?
Suppose it is a pathspec (with wildcards) that matches some paths, and
we happen to have the remote branch origin/<that-pathspec>, then it is
still ambiguous whether we should go create branch
"<that-pathspec>" or go check out the paths matched by the pathspec.

:
A huge difference between these two

	$ echo Hello >'n??t' && git add 'n??t'
	$ git branch 'n??t'

is that the former is taken and the latter is rejected, even though
neither of them is particularly a sane or a likely thing.

Isn't that a good enough reason why

	$ git checkout 'n??t'

cannot mean checking 'n??t' branch out, be it either an existing
local one or auto-vivified one out of a remote-tracking branch?

I think you see 'n??t' as a pathspec, but I'm thinking about a user
who sees 'n??t' as a branch name, not pathspec and he would have a
different expectation.

See above for the reason why I think there is no room for different
expectations to come in the picture in this case.