On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 6:16 AM, Charles Bailey <charles@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 09:22:47PM +0530, karthik nayak wrote: >> On 04/20/2015 02:49 PM, Charles Bailey wrote: >> >As far as I could tell - and please correct me if I've misunderstood, >> >cat-file's literally is about dealing with unrecognized types whereas >> >hash-object's --literally is about both creating objects with bad types >> >and invalid objects of "recognized" types. This latter scenario is where >> >the option name "literally" makes the most sense. >> Yes. What you're saying is correct, but it also makes sense as we're asking >> "cat-file" to give us information about the object irrespective of the type of the >> object, hence asking it to literally print the information. Also it stays as a compliment >> to "hash-object --literally", which is already existing. > > OK, I think you've hit the main point which I was trying to make. > > To me, "literally" means "without transformation" or "exactly as > written/recorded/transmitted" (which -t/-s do anyway) and doesn't really > encompass the "irrespective of type" meaning that it has been given here. > > In any case, I've made my point so I won't labour it any further. I > think that --no-validation or --allow-any-type might be more accurate > but if everyone else is happy enough with --literally then I'm happy to > live with that too. It's easy to be blinded into thinking that cat-file's new option should be named --literally since it was inspired by the --literally option of hash-object, but indeed it may not be the best choice. In addition to your above suggestions (and --unchecked which you proposed earlier), if we take inspiration from existing Git options, perhaps one of the following (or something derived from them) would be better? --force --ignore-errors --no-check --unsafe --no-strict --aggressive Or, some pure made-up bike-shedding? --try-harder --allow-bogus-type --ignore-bogus-type --loose --gently -- 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