Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 2. We change the syntax to something like
>>
>>     symref-update SP <ref> SP <new-ref> [SP (ref <old-target> | oid
>> <old-oid>)] LF
>>
>> this would remove any ambiguity since the user specifies the data type
>> they're providing.
>
> Yup.  Being explicit helps, especially if you are only dealing with
> programs that do not complain "that's too many keystrokes" like
> pesky humans ;-).
>
> When the topic's overall title is to add support for symbolic refs
> to the update-ref command, a natural expectation is that in a far
> enough future everything that can be done with "git symbolic-ref"
> can be done with "git update-ref" and we can, if we wanted to,
> depreate "git symbolic-ref".  Is that really what is going on here?
>
> IOW, we should add support for operation modes other than "--stdin"
> as well, shouldn't we?
>
> Thanks.

That's a good point, I was thinking of something like this too, but
didn't want to bloat this series. Would it make sense to add this
functionality in a follow up series with the cleanup that Patrick
mentioned [1] too?

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/ZidXrdi7hXdAnDhy@tanuki/