On 08/30/2013 06:51 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Brad King <brad.king@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> +With `--stdin`, update-ref reads instructions from standard input and >> +performs all modifications together. Empty lines are ignored. >> +Each non-empty line is parsed as whitespace-separated arguments. >> +Use single-quotes to enclose whitespace and backslashes and an >> +unquoted backslash to escape a single quote. > > That is somewhat unusual. > > When we need to deal with arbitrary strings (like pathnames), other > parts of the system usually give the user two interfaces, --stdin > with and without -z, and the strings are C-quoted when run without > the -z option, and terminated with NUL when run with the -z option. Great, this was the kind of suggestion I was looking for in the original PATCH/RFC cover letter. Thanks. I'll start with the C-quoted version and think about adding -z once we've agreed on that format. >> +Specify updates with >> +lines of the form: >> + >> + [--no-deref] [--] <ref> <newvalue> [<oldvalue>] > > What is -- doing here? refs given to update-ref begin with refs/ > (otherwise it is HEAD), no? The existing update-ref command line can be used to create all kinds of refs, even starting in "-". I didn't want to add any restriction in the stdin format. I'm not opposed to it though. Thanks, -Brad -- 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