[darcs-users] Using hash(es) for selecting one or more patches

Isaac Dupree ml at isaac.cedarswampstudios.org
Mon Sep 22 01:56:49 UTC 2014


On 08/26/2014 03:09 AM, Gian Piero Carrubba wrote:
> Hi Guillame
> 
> * [Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 04:51:31PM -0300] Guillaume Hoffmann:
>>> now that `log` shows the hash of the patches, I would like to use it
>>> for selecting patches as `log (or whatever) -p` is not much handy
>>> where there are similar- or same-named patches. On the other hand,
>>> typing `--match 'hash` is boring, so I've added a `-H/--hash`[0]
>>> option that aliases to `--match 'hash ...'`.
>>
>> I think it's a good idea.
>>
>> I wouldn't even mind using -h (currently used as --help). Some
>> programs use it as a --help alias (svn, hg), others don't (git, ghc).
> 
> I'm pretty adverse to this, as '-h' for 'help' has a long tradition in
> the Unix world. Also, when this is not the case (git, ghc), as far as I
> know '-h' is not used for something different but is simply
> unrecognized. My idea is that it would break users expectations and
> violate an unwritten contract.

`ls -h`, at least GNU ls, means `ls --human-readable` (print file sizes
with K/M/G suffix).  Some programs do keep -h for help, but among the
basic Unix tools I tried so far (ls, cd, cp, mv, find, echo, printf,
true, false, test, df, du, id, uname, tar, gzip, chmod, chown, wc, less,
fsck, shutdown) only gzip means "help" by -h, and a few of them mean
something entirely different by -h.  Is GNU/Linux breaking with the Unix
tradition here?

-Isaac



More information about the darcs-users mailing list