doc: clarify that --abbrev=<n> is about the minimum length

Early text written in 2006 explains the "--abbrev=<n>" option to
"show only a partial prefix", without saying that the length of the
partial prefix is not necessarily the number given to the option to
ensure that the output names the object uniquely.

Update documentation for the diff family of commands, "blame",
"branch --verbose", "ls-files" and "ls-tree" to stress that the
short prefix must uniquely refer to an object, and <n> is merely
the mininum number of hexdigits used in the prefix.

Helped-by: Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This commit is contained in:
Junio C Hamano
2020-11-04 14:01:37 -08:00
parent 898f80736c
commit cda34e0d0c
6 changed files with 18 additions and 11 deletions

View File

@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
[--exclude-standard]
[--error-unmatch] [--with-tree=<tree-ish>]
[--full-name] [--recurse-submodules]
[--abbrev] [--] [<file>...]
[--abbrev[=<n>]] [--] [<file>...]
DESCRIPTION
-----------
@ -153,7 +153,8 @@ a space) at the start of each line:
--abbrev[=<n>]::
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
lines, show only a partial prefix.
lines, show the shortest prefix that is at least '<n>'
hexdigits long that uniquely refers the object.
Non default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
--debug::