Re: Weird behavior of shell variables in git aliases

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 02:35:10PM +0100, Lasse Makholm wrote:

> On 22 March 2011 14:28, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> > But I think that is a little too magic for my taste. Although the false
> > positives ("!echo 'literal $#'") and false negatives (you want "!foo" to
> > _ignore_ its parameters) are pretty obscure, I would prefer to keep
> > things simple.
> 
> Then how about simply:
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
> index 6468a68..8097480 100644
> --- a/Documentation/config.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/config.txt
> @@ -586,9 +586,16 @@ If the alias expansion is prefixed with an
> exclamation point,
>  it will be treated as a shell command.  For example, defining
>  "alias.new = !gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD", the invocation
>  "git new" is equivalent to running the shell command
> -"gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD".  Note that shell commands will be
> -executed from the top-level directory of a repository, which may
> -not necessarily be the current directory.
> +"gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD". Note that any arguments you pass
> +when running aliases are simply appended to the shell command.
> +This means that "alias.foo = !echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3" will
> +not do what you expect. To use alias arguments as positional
> +parameters, wrap your command in a shell function:
> +"alias.foo = !foo () { echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3; }; foo"
> ++
> +Shell commands will be executed from the top-level directory
> +of a repository, which may not necessarily be the current
> +directory.

Yeah, that certainly improves the situation.

A small formatting nit: Those long commands with punctuation get hard to
read in the middle of a paragraph. Maybe something like this on top:

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index 3916665..d2b7515 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -582,10 +582,18 @@ it will be treated as a shell command.  For example, defining
 "git new" is equivalent to running the shell command
 "gitk --all --not ORIG_HEAD". Note that any arguments you pass
 when running aliases are simply appended to the shell command.
-This means that "alias.foo = !echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3" will
-not do what you expect. To use alias arguments as positional
+This means that
++
+----------------------
+alias.foo = !echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3
+----------------------
++
+will not do what you expect. To use alias arguments as positional
 parameters, wrap your command in a shell function:
-"alias.foo = !foo () { echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3; }; foo"
++
+----------------------
+alias.foo = !foo () { echo $# args: $1, $2 and $3; }; foo
+----------------------
 +
 Shell commands will be executed from the top-level directory
 of a repository, which may not necessarily be the current

-Peff

PS Your patch was wrapped on the @@ line. You might want to check your
   mailer settings.