[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

Re: ugly aliases

From: Karl Fogel <kfogel_at_collab.net>
Date: 2001-05-21 23:59:25 CEST

Peter Vogel <pvogel@arsin.com> writes:
> Would "stat" be an acceptable alternative? Not that I have
> voting rights or anything, but I really *hate* aliases that
> don't communicate what they really are. When I read Greg's
> list, I had no idea what pl,pg,ps,st,df and di did. I
> would know what svn stat did :-) And as a CM admin, when I
> tell a user "run svn stat" it flows nicely off the tongue, but
> if I say "run svn ess-tee" it doesn't and it doesn't tell them
> what it's really gonna do. Is two keystrokes that much to pay
> for clarity?

The point of the aliases is not to be mnemonics, but to be *fast*. If
one doesn't know the command set so familiarly as to know the aliases,
one can say the full command name.

  - "svn status" is good, because it's easy to remember

  - "svn st" is good, because people who would otherwise type "svn
     status" a hundred times a day will save four hundred keystrokes.

  - "svn stat" is a middle ground. I personally wouldn't mind keeping
    it (& don't see the harm in doing so), since it enables one to say
    "run svn stat" and mean exactly that. But I do think it is the
    least useful of these three, as it compromises on both clarity and
    speed.

As for:

> list, I had no idea what pl,pg,ps,st,df and di did. [...]

Right, but so what? You can stick to the full-length command names
and never worry. Whenever you want to know more, run "svn --help".

-K

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:30 2006

This is an archived mail posted to the Subversion Dev mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.