Re: Tilde spec - befuzzled

[Thomas Rast <trast@inf.ethz.ch>]

Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se> writes:

> On 02/28/2012 10:07 AM, Luke Diamand wrote:
>> The documentation for caret and tilde specs is making my head hurt, even though they always _do_ exactly what I want. And I thought I understood them until I read more carefully.
>> 
>> A suffix '{caret}' to a revision parameter means the first parent of
>> that commit object. '{caret}<n>' means the <n>th parent (i.e.
>> '<rev>{caret}'
>> 
>> So far, so good.
>> 
>> '<rev>{tilde}<n>', e.g. 'master{tilde}3'::
>> A suffix '{tilde}<n>' to a revision parameter means the commit
>> object that is the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named
>> commit object, following only the first parents.
>> 
>> Hang on, *grand*-parents?
>> 
>
> Replace "grand-parent" with "ancestor" and your head might hurt a
> little less. Caret only ever describes parent, while tilde can
> describe either parent or n'th generation grand-parent. Since parent
> and grand-parent are all ancestors, that would be a better term.

Perhaps we should reword it as "n-th first-parent ancestor"?  Barring
confusion about the position of the dashes, that leaves little room for
error.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch