From: Ian Wienand Date: Mon, 27 May 2024 00:30:48 +0000 (+1000) Subject: Documentation: alias: add notes on shell expansion X-Git-Tag: v2.46.0-rc0~70^2~1 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=d35a7436597277d65c84acdc4e951c45c791ea15;p=thirdparty%2Fgit.git Documentation: alias: add notes on shell expansion When writing inline shell for shell-expansion aliases (i.e. prefixed with "!"), there are some caveats around argument parsing to be aware of. This series of notes attempts to explain what is happening more clearly. Signed-off-by: Ian Wienand Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- diff --git a/Documentation/config/alias.txt b/Documentation/config/alias.txt index 40851ef429..2c5db0ad84 100644 --- a/Documentation/config/alias.txt +++ b/Documentation/config/alias.txt @@ -27,3 +27,17 @@ it will be treated as a shell command. For example, defining repository, which may not necessarily be the current directory. * `GIT_PREFIX` is set as returned by running `git rev-parse --show-prefix` from the original current directory. See linkgit:git-rev-parse[1]. +* Shell command aliases always receive any extra arguments provided to + the Git command-line as positional arguments. +** Care should be taken if your shell alias is a "one-liner" script + with multiple commands (e.g. in a pipeline), references multiple + arguments, or is otherwise not able to handle positional arguments + added at the end. For example: `alias.cmd = "!echo $1 | grep $2"` + called as `git cmd 1 2` will be executed as 'echo $1 | grep $2 + 1 2', which is not what you want. +** A convenient way to deal with this is to write your script + operations in an inline function that is then called with any + arguments from the command-line. For example `alias.cmd = "!c() { + echo $1 | grep $2 ; }; c" will correctly execute the prior example. +** Setting `GIT_TRACE=1` can help you debug the command being run for + your alias.