Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > After having written this mail 4 time already, I came up with an idea I > kind of like: like find, we could make {} be a placeholder for the > "default" argument. For example: > > $ git foo --abbrev {} 10 > $ git log -M {} 1 > ... > > {} would have the same semantics as your --long-opt-default. It tells the > option parser that "no there isn't anything to grok for that command thank you > very much". Of course if for some reason you really want to pass "{}" to the > command, the stuck form holds: > > $ git foo --long-opt={} > $ git foo -o{} > > What do you think ? 1. {} means a completely different thing to find ("place the real value here"); there is no similarity. I would strongly oppose to it. If you want to invoke opt with default but still want to pass "{}" as an argument unrelated to that opt, you would do "--opt={} {}". That's double ugly. 2. For a long option with optional option-argument, --abbrev-default (or in the other order, --default-abbrev) to mark "there is no option argument, do not do your context sensitive parsing" and using an explicit '=' (e.g. --abbrev=<value>) to mark "this is the argument, do not do your context sensitive parsing" is much more readable. 3. There are only handful options with optional option-argument that does not have long format. I think it is reasonable to require "stuck argument" to them. For most of the short options that take optional option-argument, traditionally we did not allow them to be spelled as separate words, so there is no regression to introduce such a behaviour. -B/-M/-C options to diff family would be handled sanely this way. Another possibility, which I do not like very much, is to add long format to them, if only for paranoid scripters who want rename detection with the default threshold and cannot say "diff -M $foo". They can say "diff --detect-rename-default $foo" instead ("-M" is a bad example here, as giving a single path never makes sense for -M so $foo cannot be a file whose name is e.g. "20", and default number of abbreviated commit object name is longer than 2 which means it would make it longer than "percentage" form of threshold). So in short, for an option that takes optional option-argument: - if it is given as "--<long-name>-default", there is no optional argument, period. - if it is given as "--long-name" but there is no next word, there is no optional argument, either. - if it is given as "--long-name=value", that "value" is the argument. Barf if it does not validate. - if it is given as "--long-name", and there is a next word, see if that is plausible as its argument. Get it and signal the caller you consumed it, if it is. Ignore it and signal the caller you didn't, if it isn't. - if it is given as "-svalue", that "value" is the argument. Barf if it does not validate. - if it is given as "-s", and there is a next word, and if the option has long format counterpart as well, then see if the next word is plausible as its argument. Get it and signal the caller you consumed it, if it is. Ignore it and signal the caller you didn't, if it isn't. - if it is given as "-s" but the previous rule did not trigger, there is no optional argument. - 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