On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 06:05:00PM +0200, Fredrik Gustafsson wrote: > I don't quite manage to figure out gits argv parsing and would need some > help on the way. > > I want: > git format-patch -o outdir HEAD~ > > Work exactly the way it does now, setting output_directory to outdir. > But I also want > git format-patch -o HEAD~ > > to set output_directory with a NULL value so that I can assign a default > value to it. Is that even possible with the current argv-parsing implementation? It's possible to have an "optional" argument by using the PARSE_OPT_OPTARG flag. However, it is not backwards compatible from the user's perspective, as they must use the "sticked" form: git format-patch -ooutdir ... to specify the argument. Otherwise, it is not clear in: git format-patch -o outdir HEAD~ whether "outdir" is the argument to "-o", or if it is simply the next argument. However, if you are just interested in "turning off" a previously given argument, we usually spell that with the "--no-" prefix to the long option (e.g., "--no-output-directory" in this case). I'm not clear how that interacts with your example, though. Your example tries to use "-o" to set output_directory to NULL. But it is already NULL if you do not specify any "-o" at all. -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