On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:40:31 -0600,
Eric Sunshine wrote:

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 3:43 PM Luke Shumaker [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

$* is for when you want to smash things together, whitespace-separated;
$@ is for when you want them to be separate strings.  There are a couple
of places in subtree that erroneously use $@ when smashing args together
in to an error message.

Can we be explicit and say "$@" in the commit message rather than bare
$@ since the unquoted form is not magical and acts exactly like $*.

Also: s/in to/into/

Nit: I have some trouble following what the commit message is actually
trying to say with "smash things" and "separate strings". It might be
simpler to say merely that use of "$@" in these particular instances
is overkill and possibly misleading to readers not familiar with the
finer details of $* vs. "$@".

The patch itself makes sense.

How's this:

---
subtree: use "$*" instead of "$@" as appropriate

"$*" is for when you want to concatenate the args together,
whitespace-separated; and "$@" is for when you want them to be separate
strings.

There are several places in subtree that erroneously use $@ when
concatenating args together into an error message.

For instance, if the args are argv[1]="dead" and argv[2]="beef", then
the line

    die "You must provide exactly one revision.  Got: '$@'"

surely intends to call 'die' with the argument

    argv[1]="You must provide exactly one revision.  Got: 'dead beef'"

however, because the line used $@ instead of $*, it will actually call
'die' with the arguments

    argv[1]="You must provide exactly one revision.  Got: 'dead"
    argv[2]="beef'"

This isn't a big deal, because 'die' concatenates its arguments together
anyway (using "$*").  But that doesn't change the fact that it was a
mistake to use $@ instead of $*, even though in the end $@ still ended
up doing the right thing.
---

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker