On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 6:06 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The word "index" is quite well understood: that which points at the > information given a headword that refers to it, which is exactly what the > "index" we have is. On the other hand, "to stage/staging area" is not as > widely used outside the narrow shipping/logistics circles. That's what git has, *internally*, but that's not how high-level users interact with it. If 'git add file' was a true index from the point of view of the user; then the user would have some kind of identifier, like '1', or possibly and identifier of his own. Then the user could use this identifier, say; give me the file '1', and the operation would be much faster. But that's has *absolutely* nothing to do with how users see these operations. The user does not see an index at all. Maybe git has an index, but it could be replaced by something else, and the user would still see the same; it's an implementation detail; not something the user cares about. This has been explained and discussed many times. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras -- 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