Re: bug: unexpected output for "git st" + suggestion

["Tarek Ziadé" <ziade.tarek@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Erik Faye-Lund <kusmabite@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am new to Git and I tried to run "git st"
>>
>> I have found one small bug: "status" is not listed in the help screen
>> Git displays in that case.
>>
>> $ git st
>> git: 'st' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.
>>
>> Did you mean one of these?
>>        reset
>>        stage
>>        stash
>>
>
> This isn't strictly speaking a bug. Git uses Levenshtein distance
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) to figure out what
> to suggest. If any command has a sLevenshtein distance of less than 6
> (given our coefficients), then all commands with that distance is
> suggested. But perhaps we should do something different
>
> But perhaps we could do better. We have some commands that are
> considered more "important", ie the ones listed when doing "git help"
> without "--all". "status" is one of these. Perhaps these commands
> should always be included if they are below the Levenshtein distance
> threshold or something?
>

Oh, interesting ! Levenshtein is great for typos but highly depends on
the fact that the word I am entering has about the same length as the
command I am looking for.

When I typed "st" I was thinking about an alias/shortcut. So the
question would be: is "st" a common alias in the git community for the
"status" command ?

If the answer is yes, and if there are other common aliases used out
there, I would suggest keeping the Levenshtein distance as it is now,
but complete the list of suggestions by using a "common aliases
mapper."

Cheers
Tarek

-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org