possible usability issue in rebase -i?

[Erik Faye-Lund <kusmabite@googlemail.com>]

I recently came over a not-overly-helpful error in git rebase -i, when
a line got wrapped by the editor so that a part of the commit-message
was interpreted as a command:

---
$ git rebase -i HEAD~20
<edit file>
Unknown command: .
fatal: ambiguous argument 'Please fix this in the file C:/msysgit/git/.git/rebas
e-merge/git-rebase-todo.': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions
fatal: Not a valid object name Please fix this in the file C:/msysgit/git/.git/r
ebase-merge/git-rebase-todo.
fatal: bad revision 'Please fix this in the file C:/msysgit/git/.git/rebase-merg
e/git-rebase-todo.'

$ git --version
git version 1.6.5.1386.g43a7a.dirty
---

In this particular case, the first character on the new line was '.',
so the first line of the error message makes perfect sense, but the
lines that followed the real error got me pretty confused. Perhaps
this is something that could be cleaned away? I'd think that an
unknown command always should be fatal, and not need to propagate
further. But I might be wrong, as I'm not familiar with the inner
workings of rebase -i.

-- 
Erik "kusma" Faye-Lund