Hi,

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
quoted text
> Karl Chen <quarl@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
>
>> ... you really think "branchfoo" instead of
>> "refs/heads/branchfoo" is a narrow special case?
>
> Of course it is narrower.  There are namespaces other than "heads" under
> refs, and not everybody is interested in branches.
>
>> obviously all those people posting on blogs don't know about it :)
>
> Yes, and that won't be helped by any new option to the plumbing.
>
> The above two does not necessarily mean that it is useless to add a new
> option to help a narrow special case that is common, though.
>
You'll find hereafter two patches which implements this in
git-symbolic-ref and git-rev-parse. Feel free to choose the one you
find the best. If you choose to integrate one of these, tells me and
I'll do a proper documentation bits and patch submission.

Sample output:

~/git/% ./git-rev-parse --symbolic-short-name HEAD
master
~/git/% ./git-symbolic-ref -a HEAD
master
~/git/% git checkout v1.6.1
~/git/% ./git-rev-parse --symbolic-short-name HEAD
HEAD
~/git/% ./git-symbolic-ref -a HEAD
fatal: ref HEAD is not a symbolic ref
~/git/% ./git-symbolic-ref -qa HEAD
~/git/%

Thanks in advance,

 - Arnaud

ps: I choose --symbolic-short-name as the opposite of
--symbolic-full-name for consistency.
ps2: sorry for the bogus mime-type