Re: [PATCH] branch: add '-' to delete previous branch

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
To: Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com>
Cc: Ivan Tham <pickfire@riseup.net>,
	git@vger.kernel.org,
	"brian m . carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] branch: add '-' to delete previous branch
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:00:13 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200429190013.GG83442@syl.local> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <877dxyo1k8.fsf@osv.gnss.ru>

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 04:37:27PM +0300, Sergey Organov wrote:
> Ivan Tham <pickfire@riseup.net> writes:
>
> > Add support to delete previous branch from git checkout/switch to have
> > feature parity with git switch -.
>
> Maybe I'm late on this, but to me, who leaves in the Linux world,
> "a_command -" strongly suggests a_command will read further input
> from stdin.
>
> [...]
>
> > +To delete the previous branch::
> > ++
> > +------------
> > +$ git branch -D -
>
> ... so this suggests that the command, when used like this:
>
> $ echo "branch_name" | git branch -D -
>
> will delete "branch_name" rather than some "previous" branch, whatever
> that means.
>
> Is this short-cut /that/ important to create yet another confusion?

I think that it may be causing more confusion now than it would be after
Ivan's patch. 'git checkout', for example, also treats '-' as a synonym
for '@{-1}'.

In my opinion, it is fairly clear that 'git branch -D -' means "delete
the last branch", and not "delete a list of branches from stdin.

> -- Sergey

Thanks,
Taylor