are paths.
* When an argument can be misunderstood as either a revision or a path,
- they can be disambiguated by placing `\--` between them.
- E.g. `git diff \-- HEAD` is, "I have a file called HEAD in my work
+ they can be disambiguated by placing `--` between them.
+ E.g. `git diff -- HEAD` is, "I have a file called HEAD in my work
tree. Please show changes between the version I staged in the index
and what I have in the work tree for that file". not "show difference
between the HEAD commit and the work tree as a whole". You can say
- `git diff HEAD \--` to ask for the latter.
+ `git diff HEAD --` to ask for the latter.
- * Without disambiguating `\--`, git makes a reasonable guess, but errors
+ * Without disambiguating `--`, git makes a reasonable guess, but errors
out and asking you to disambiguate when ambiguous. E.g. if you have a
file called HEAD in your work tree, `git diff HEAD` is ambiguous, and
- you have to say either `git diff HEAD \--` or `git diff \-- HEAD` to
+ you have to say either `git diff HEAD --` or `git diff -- HEAD` to
disambiguate.
-
++
When writing a script that is expected to handle random user-input, it is
a good practice to make it explicit which arguments are which by placing
-disambiguating `\--` at appropriate places.
+disambiguating `--` at appropriate places.
+
+ * Many commands allow wildcards in paths, but you need to protect
+ them from getting globbed by the shell. These two mean different
+ things:
++
+--------------------------------
+$ git checkout -- *.c
+$ git checkout -- \*.c
+--------------------------------
++
+The former lets your shell expand the fileglob, and you are asking
+the dot-C files in your working tree to be overwritten with the version
+in the index. The latter passes the `*.c` to Git, and you are asking
+the paths in the index that match the pattern to be checked out to your
+working tree. After running `git add hello.c; rm hello.c`, you will _not_
+see `hello.c` in your working tree with the former, but with the latter
+you will.
Here are the rules regarding the "flags" that you should follow when you are
scripting git:
`git log -1 HEAD` but write `git log -1 HEAD --`; the former will not work
if you happen to have a file called `HEAD` in the work tree.
+ * many commands allow a long option "--option" to be abbreviated
+ only to their unique prefix (e.g. if there is no other option
+ whose name begins with "opt", you may be able to spell "--opt" to
+ invoke the "--option" flag), but you should fully spell them out
+ when writing your scripts; later versions of Git may introduce a
+ new option whose name shares the same prefix, e.g. "--optimize",
+ to make a short prefix that used to be unique no longer unique.
+
ENHANCED OPTION PARSER
----------------------
From the git 1.5.4 series and further, many git commands (not all of them at the
time of the writing though) come with an enhanced option parser.
-Here is an exhaustive list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
+Here is a list of the facilities provided by this option parser.
Magic Options
`git clean -fdx`.
+Abbreviating long options
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Commands that support the enhanced option parser accepts unique
+prefix of a long option as if it is fully spelled out, but use this
+with a caution. For example, `git commit --amen` behaves as if you
+typed `git commit --amend`, but that is true only until a later version
+of Git introduces another option that shares the same prefix,
+e.g `git commit --amenity" option.
+
+
Separating argument from the option
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can write the mandatory option parameter to an option as a separate
http://marc.info/?l=git&m=119150393620273 for further
information.
-Documentation
--------------
-Documentation by Pierre Habouzit and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
-
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite