On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 11:16:54AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Taylor Blau <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > In either case, I think '--zero-oid' makes more sense than '--null-oid' > > (and it matches the tests that are already written). The pair > > '--zero-oid' and '--empty-oid=<type>' make sense to me. > > I am not sure rev-parse should even know about "empty-oid". An end > user or a script who wants to learn what name an empty blob has can > and should ask "git hash-object -t blob --stdin </dev/null". Yeah, my uncertainty ("should this be '--empty-oid' or '--null-oid'?") is probably a good indication (to me, at least) that the option shouldn't even exist. > I can buy --zero-oid might be handy, but don't see a pressing need > if it is merely to support our test suite and sample hooks. > Instead, something like > > ZERO_OID=$(git hash-object --stdin </dev/null | tr '[0-9a-f]' '0') > > should suffice, no? Absolutely. > Take this as a mild indifference, not as a strong rejection. For what it's worth, I'm probably as indifferent as you. I would be slightly less so if there was evidence of lots of out-of-tree scripts that care about these special OIDs, but I haven't looked too far. Thanks, Taylor