--------------------
A revision parameter '<rev>' typically, but not necessarily, names a
-commit object. It uses what is called an 'extended SHA1'
+commit object. It uses what is called an 'extended SHA-1'
syntax. Here are various ways to spell object names. The
ones listed near the end of this list name trees and
blobs contained in a commit.
'<sha1>', e.g. 'dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735', 'dae86e'::
- The full SHA1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or
+ The full SHA-1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or
a leading substring that is unique within the repository.
E.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both
name the same commit object if there is no other object in
A symbolic ref name. E.g. 'master' typically means the commit
object referenced by 'refs/heads/master'. If you
happen to have both 'heads/master' and 'tags/master', you can
- explicitly say 'heads/master' to tell git which one you mean.
+ explicitly say 'heads/master' to tell Git which one you mean.
When ambiguous, a '<refname>' is disambiguated by taking the
first match in the following rules:
+
Note that any of the 'refs/*' cases above may come either from
the '$GIT_DIR/refs' directory or from the '$GIT_DIR/packed-refs' file.
-While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is prefered as
+While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is preferred as
some output processing may assume ref names in UTF-8.
'<refname>@\{<date>\}', e.g. 'master@\{yesterday\}', 'HEAD@\{5 minutes ago\}'::
object of that type is found or the object cannot be
dereferenced anymore (in which case, barf). '<rev>{caret}0'
is a short-hand for '<rev>{caret}\{commit\}'.
++
+'rev{caret}\{object\}' can be used to make sure 'rev' names an
+object that exists, without requiring 'rev' to be a tag, and
+without dereferencing 'rev'; because a tag is already an object,
+it does not have to be dereferenced even once to get to an object.
'<rev>{caret}\{\}', e.g. 'v0.99.8{caret}\{\}'::
A suffix '{caret}' followed by an empty brace pair