On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 09:39:43AM -0700, Dun Peal wrote: > It seems that a variable is available only once?! How can the > following shell session be explained: > > $ git config alias.test0 > !echo $1 > $ git test0 foo > foo > $ git config alias.test1 > !echo $1 && echo $1 > $ git test1 foo > > foo > $ git config alias.test2 > !BRANCH=$1 && echo $BRANCH && echo $BRANCH > $ git test2 foo > > foo Because in v1.7.4 and earlier, we literally just tack the arguments (shell-quoted) onto the end of the string. So your alias ends up expanding to: /bin/sh -c "!echo $1 && echo $1 'foo'" So the first echo is empty, and then the second one echos foo. And what you are trying to do doesn't work with a straight alias (at the bottom I'll show you what you want). But interestingly, that's _not_ the behavior as of Erik's 7f51f8b (alias: use run_command api to execute aliases, 2011-01-07), which is in master but not yet released. With that, we end up executing: sh -c 'echo $1 && echo $1 "$@"' 'echo $1 && echo $1' 'foo' which prints "foo foo". So it is technically a regression. I don't know how much we care; using positional parameters like this was already nonsensical, as shown above. For reference, what you actually want (in either system) is: $ git config alias.test1 !sh -c 'echo $1 && echo $1' - $ git test1 foo foo foo Make sure to include the "-" (or some other string) which ends up as $0. -Peff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html