Re: [PATCH] submodule--helper.c: add only-active to foreach

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Guillaume Galeazzi <guillaume.galeazzi@gmail.com> writes:

> The difference is that you repeat twice the same flag. Sometime
> repeating a flag overwrite the previous value,...

I already said I was *not* suggesting a concrete syntax.  The more
important point was to make us realize that we need to think outside
of "active-only" and make sure we can support other kinds of selection
criteria for submodules.

So whatever syntax you would want to use to specify more than one,
combine, and negate, I do not care too deeply, as long as it is in
line with what we use in the other parts of the system ;-).

> Regarding previous example, it use '!' to negate the value. Not all
> people know the meaning of it.

We mark the bottom commit by negating with ^ (e.g. "git log ^maint master"),
we mark "not ignored" entries by prefixing with '!' in .gitignore,
we mark "unset" entries by prefixing with '-' in .gitattributes (the
'!' prefix is used to mark "unspecified" entries), and "rev-list --boundary"
output uses '~' prefix to mean "this is not part of the range".

So there are many one-letter "not" we already use, and there seem to
be no rule to pick which one in what context X-<.

So spelling out "--no-blah" to mean "not with blah" is probably a
good thing to do (especially if readers do not mind being English
centric).