On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 10:57:08AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> The first addition is indeed a huge improvement.
>
> Note that any argument you pass when running aliases are simply
> appended to the shell command.
>
> The original didn't explicitly say it but it really should have. The
> example that comes before it, "alias.new = !...", should be updated with
> an invocation that takes a parameter, perhaps like this:
>
> With this alias defined:
>
> [alias] since = "!gitk --all --since"
>
> you can view commits in the last week with:
>
> $ git since 7.days
>
> because this expands to "gitk --all --since 7.days" by concatenating
> the arguments supplied at runtime to the alias.
>
> Then say that "Note ..." to stress that point. The description at that
> point has become much better.
>
> With that understanding already there,
>
> This means that "alias.foo = !echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3" will
> not do what you expect.
>
> is no longer true; nobody sane would expect that if you made them realize
> that "simply appended" already. Just dropping that sentence would make
> the resulting text flow much better.
Agreed, your version is better.
> If you want to refer to arguments given to the alias, you can
> wrap it as a shell script, e.g.
>
> [alias] reversed = "!sh -c 'echo $2 $1' -"
>
> or a shell function, e.g.
>
> [alias] reversed = "!reversed() { echo $2 $1 } && reversed"
>
> and invoke it like so:
>
> $ git reversed one two
> two one
>
> I personally think the former "sh -c <str> -" is the more traditional and
> well understood form (iow, an idiom) for people who breathe shells.
Yeah, that is probably true. One advantage of the function idiom is that
it doesn't happen inside single-quotes, so it's one less layer of
quoting to deal with. And of course it saves a shell invocation. So I
think mentioning both is reasonable.
> > +----------------------
> > +alias.foo = !echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3
> > +----------------------
>
> While I totally agree with the formatting advice you gave here, we may
> want to avoid this notation; neither "git config alias.foo = !echo ..."
> nor writing "alias.foo = ..." in .git/config file would work.
Yeah, I didn't even think about that, but you are right.
-Peff
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