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Confusing wording and lack of explanation on Exploring History Episode #607

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eshook2010 opened this issue Apr 3, 2019 · 2 comments · May be fixed by #1035
Open

Confusing wording and lack of explanation on Exploring History Episode #607

eshook2010 opened this issue Apr 3, 2019 · 2 comments · May be fixed by #1035
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@erinmgraham
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status:need more info More information needed

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@eshook2010
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The section discussing using git diff HEAD states "which is the same as what you would get if you leave out HEAD (try it)" with no explanation as to WHY it would be the same result, which is easy to infer but may not be clear to some learners. Also, the sentence before git diff HEAD~1 says "The real goodness in all this is when you can refer to previous commits" is a bit confusing and does not flow well with the rest of the lesson.
@billbrod
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I agree that explaining it in more detail would be helpful. What about replacing "which is the same as what you would get if you leave out HEAD (try it)" with "HEAD is the default option for git diff, and so omitting it will not change the command's output at all (try it)."

I also agree that the "The real goodness in all this is when you can refer to previous commits" is a bit awkwardly phrased. How about something like "But the real power of git diff is the ability to compare far into the past, to compare with any previous commits. For example, we can look at the commit before HEAD by adding ~1 (where “~” is “tilde”, pronounced [til-duh])."

fmichonneau pushed a commit to fmichonneau/git-novice that referenced this issue Jul 1, 2021
@maxim-belkin
Makefile: require index.md (swcarpentry#607)
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@kekoziar
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The beginning of that episode says

You can refer to the most recent commit of the working directory by using the identifier HEAD.

Which sets up the next section (git diff HEAD is the same as git diff). Does that provide the clarification you're looking for?

@kekoziar kekoziar added the status:need more info More information needed label Jul 31, 2021
@erinmgraham erinmgraham linked a pull request Nov 3, 2024 that will close this issue
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Modify confusing words and add explanation to git diff with Head erinmgraham/git-novice
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@erinmgraham @billbrod @eshook2010 @kekoziar