"Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@xxxxxxx> writes:
> From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 9:23 PM
>> "Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@xxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>>> I wasn't aware of the "abbreviated options" capability. Is meant to
>>> be in the man pages as I couldn't find it, or is it described
>>> differently?
>>
>> $ git help gitcli
>>
>> is the closest that comes to mind.
>>
>> If it is not reachable from "git help git", we may want to sprinkle
>> some more linkgit:gitfoo[$n] around the documentation sources. I
>> didn't check.
>>
>
> I eventually found a reference in the parse-options API to the fact that
> 'Long options may be abbreviated, as long as the abbreviation is
> unambiguous.'
>
> It may be worth bringing some of those parse-options API basics bullets'
> forward into the gitcli page, if appropriate.
OK, how about doing this? Sort of killing two birds with one stone.
-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] gitcli: describe abbreviation of long options
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/gitcli.txt | 8 ++++++++
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitcli.txt b/Documentation/gitcli.txt
index ea17f7a..3e72a5d 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitcli.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitcli.txt
@@ -62,6 +62,14 @@ 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
----------------------
--
1.7.12.rc3.2.gbd120e3
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