On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 1:21 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@xxxxxxxxx> writes: >> >>>> - More importantly, what do these do? I do not think of a good >>>> description that generalizes "base of refs/foo/bar/boz is foo" to >>>> explain your :base. >>> >>> $ ./git for-each-ref --format "%(refname)%(end) %(refname:dir)" >>> refs/heads/master refs/heads >>> refs/heads/ref-filter refs/heads >>> refs/remotes/junio/va/i18n refs/remotes/junio/va >>> >>> $ ./git for-each-ref refs/heads --format >>> "%(align:left,30)%(refname)%(end) %(refname:base)" >>> refs/heads/master heads >>> refs/heads/ref-filter heads >>> refs/remotes/junio/va/i18n remotes >>> >>> I guess this should clear it up. >> >> Hmph. >> >> I would guess from these examples that :dir is an equivalent to >> dirname(). But it is unclear how :base is defined. Is it the path >> component that comes immediately after "refs/" that appears at the >> beginning? > > ':dir' is equivalent to dirname(). Yup, base is the folder right after 'refs/'. > For local branches it is 'heads' for remotes it is 'remotes'. This is useful > when we want to make decisions based on the type of branch we're dealing > with (using along with %(if)...%(end)). > > -- > Regards, > Karthik Nayak dirname makes sense. What about implementing a reverse variant of strip, which you could perform stripping of right-most components and instead of stripping by a number, strip "to" a number, ie: keep the left N most components, and then you could use something like "keep=2" to keep "refs/heads" ? I think that would be more general purpose than basename, and less confusing? Thanks, Jake