Re: Questions about git-rev-parse

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 07:33:03PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> No, it really is English. At least grammatically.
> 
> A "tree-ish" is "like a tree", exactly like "sheepish" is "like a sheep". 
> Nothing really git-specific about it, except for it certainly having 
> become common usage in a way that it may not be normally ;)

Well, in the randomhouse web page you quoted:

	Our -ish is a suffix that forms adjectives from nouns or other
	adjectives. Some of the senses existed in Old English (then
	spelled -isc but pronounced the same way), such as 'of, being,
	or pertaining to', used to form adjectives indicating a
	national, ethnic, or religious origin (British, Jewish).

it claims that the -ish suffix forms an _adjective_.   But in the sense of

	git describe <committish>

In the git world we are using "committish" (and in the documentation
sometimes we use committish and treeish, and other times we use
commit-ish and tree-ish) as a _noun_, and not an adjective.  So I'm
still going to take a bit of issue that it's grammatical English, and
I still think that "tree_specifier" and "commit_specifier" would have
been clearer.

In any case, I note that in the git(7) man page, there is a formal
definition of tree-ish, but not of commit-ish.  Would this patch to
Documentation/git.txt be correct?

diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index 9a74747..ff693c3 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -241,6 +241,12 @@ Identifier Terminology
 	operate on a <tree> object but automatically dereferences
 	<commit> and <tag> objects that point at a <tree>.
 
+<commit-ish>::
+	Indicates a commit or tag object name.  A
+	command that takes a <commit-ish> argument ultimately wants to
+	operate on a <commit> object but automatically dereferences
+	<tag> objects that point at a <commit>.
+
 <type>::
 	Indicates that an object type is required.
 	Currently one of: `blob`, `tree`, `commit`, or `tag`.

							- Ted