[PATCH] -r 1-100 not -r1:100 please...

[Rusty Russell]

On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 20:14 +0200, Denys Duchier wrote:
> John Arbash Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> writes:
> 
> > I agree that '-' is a decent separator character, but I think it is also
> > frequently used as a joining character. We have thought about it and
> > discussed it, and it doesn't really seem like the best character.

It really is, and it's fairly easy for a parser to deal with it.  For
example, consider the worst case:

	-r uuid:a-b-c-d-700

the "uuid" revisions number parser can tell you that it has consumed
everything up to the "-700".  The parser should probably be written that
way anyway, so you can try each one in turn when it's not an integer,
when someone forgot to prepend "uuid" or whatever. 

-r -5: is the kind of shorthand only a programmer could love, and -r -5-
is only marginally worse (I take back my incorrect comments about
parsing this, BTW, it works).  Far better is "last:5", using the same
namespace idea as uuid, date, etc.  It also maps well to standard
literate usage of colons.

Cheers,
Rusty.
-- 
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver -- Richard Braakman