is the standard "[<options>]", and not "[options]" or other?

is the standard "[<options>]", and not "[options]" or other?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  more pedantry -- was digging through "man git-diff" and noticed the
inconsistency in how options are represented. first, in the synopsis,
you see "[options]":

  SYNOPSIS
    git diff [options] [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
    git diff [options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>...]
    git diff [options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...]
    git diff [options] <blob> <blob>
    git diff [options] [--no-index] [--] <path> <path>

while just below that in DESCRIPTION, it's all "[--options]":

  git diff [--options] [--] [<path>...]
           ^^^^^^^^^^^

a further search produced this from RelNotes/2.7.0.txt:

  "A couple of commands still showed "[options]" in their usage string
   to note where options should come on their command line, but we
   spell that "[<options>]" in most places these days."

so, "git diff -h" does in fact use the allegedly encouraged syntax:

  $ git diff -h
  usage: git diff [<options>] [<commit> [<commit>]] [--] [<path>...]
  $

but should the man pages be updated similarly? i can whip up a patch
for that unless someone wants to comment on this further.

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                  http://crashcourse.ca/dokuwiki

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

Re: is the standard "[<options>]", and not "[options]" or other?

[Stefan Beller]

On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 4:45 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> wrote:

>
> but should the man pages be updated similarly? i can whip up a patch
> for that unless someone wants to comment on this further.

Yes, please!

I think [<options>] are the best, as they are pedantically correct.
[--options] is the worst, as there is not such thing as --options.

Thanks,
Stefan