On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 09:02:42 -0800, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > .. But that is not the only thing the index does. When "git merge" > finds conflicting changes, it adds the contents for common, our and > their variants to the index for the path. This is quite different > from how you use the index "as staging area"; the index is being > used as the "merging area". When "git clean" wants to see which > paths it finds on the filesystem are not of interest, it consults > the index, which acts as the list of paths that are of interest. If the phrase "staging area" is consistently used *instead* of index, there's no problem. E.g., "git clean consults the staging area" conveys exactly the same information as "git clean consults the index" when index == staging area. The term "index" has too many *other* meanings. --- David A. Wheeler
