From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] A few more options for git-cat-file
Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 22:17:28 -0800
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References: <43924D1C.8070306@zytor.com>
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To: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> writes:

> This adds the following options to git-cat-file:
>
> -n, to get the canonical name of a resource.  This is for one thing 
> useful in tagging scripts.

Isn't "git-rev-parse --verify" good enough?

> -e, to test for the existence of a file.

This might be useful and cleaner than "cat-file -s >/dev/null"
but marginally so.  While reading the whole file and discarding
that to /dev/null is wasteful and would go against tastes of
many people, -t and -s flags do not need to read the whole thing
and not so expensive.