On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Kevin Daudt wrote: > On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 05:27:22AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > > > just noticed that in "man git-checkout", the SYNOPSIS contains the > > line: > > > > git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] [<paths>...] > > > > implying that <paths> is optional, but further down in the > > DESCRIPTION, one reads: > > > > git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>... > > > > suggesting that <pathspec> is required. > > > > Hello Robert, thank you for this report. > > Git checkout has 2 major modes of operating: > > 1. Checking out branches (and then update your working tree to match that > commit. > 2. Checking out 1 or more files from a commit. > > The first four lines of the synopsis match mode nr. 1. The next two > belong to mode nr. 2. > > The pathspec in the synopsis line you are quoting is required, because > that's how you tell git you want mode nr 2. That's why it's not > mentioned between []. The last section under description explains that > mode. > > Do you feel this distinction needs to be made more clear? hmmmmm ... let me read it again before i answer that. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================