git/Documentation/git-check-attr.txt
Junio C Hamano 33e8fc8740 usage: do not insist that standard input must come from a file
The synopsys text and the usage string of subcommands that read list
of things from the standard input are often shown like this:

	git gostak [--distim] < <list-of-doshes>

This is problematic in a number of ways:

 * The way to use these commands is more often to feed them the
   output from another command, not feed them from a file.

 * Manual pages outside Git, commands that operate on the data read
   from the standard input, e.g "sort", "grep", "sed", etc., are not
   described with such a "< redirection-from-file" in their synopsys
   text.  Our doing so introduces inconsistency.

 * We do not insist on where the output should go, by saying

	git gostak [--distim] < <list-of-doshes> > <output>

 * As it is our convention to enclose placeholders inside <braket>,
   the redirection operator followed by a placeholder filename
   becomes very hard to read, both in the documentation and in the
   help text.

Let's clean them all up, after making sure that the documentation
clearly describes the modes that take information from the standard
input and what kind of things are expected on the input.

[jc: stole example for fmt-merge-msg from Jonathan]

Helped-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
2015-10-16 15:27:52 -07:00

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git-check-attr(1)
=================
NAME
----
git-check-attr - Display gitattributes information
SYNOPSIS
--------
[verse]
'git check-attr' [-a | --all | attr...] [--] pathname...
'git check-attr' --stdin [-z] [-a | --all | attr...]
DESCRIPTION
-----------
For every pathname, this command will list if each attribute is 'unspecified',
'set', or 'unset' as a gitattribute on that pathname.
OPTIONS
-------
-a, --all::
List all attributes that are associated with the specified
paths. If this option is used, then 'unspecified' attributes
will not be included in the output.
--cached::
Consider `.gitattributes` in the index only, ignoring the working tree.
--stdin::
Read pathnames from the standard input, one per line,
instead of from the command-line.
-z::
The output format is modified to be machine-parseable.
If `--stdin` is also given, input paths are separated
with a NUL character instead of a linefeed character.
\--::
Interpret all preceding arguments as attributes and all following
arguments as path names.
If none of `--stdin`, `--all`, or `--` is used, the first argument
will be treated as an attribute and the rest of the arguments as
pathnames.
OUTPUT
------
The output is of the form:
<path> COLON SP <attribute> COLON SP <info> LF
unless `-z` is in effect, in which case NUL is used as delimiter:
<path> NUL <attribute> NUL <info> NUL
<path> is the path of a file being queried, <attribute> is an attribute
being queried and <info> can be either:
'unspecified';; when the attribute is not defined for the path.
'unset';; when the attribute is defined as false.
'set';; when the attribute is defined as true.
<value>;; when a value has been assigned to the attribute.
Buffering happens as documented under the `GIT_FLUSH` option in
linkgit:git[1]. The caller is responsible for avoiding deadlocks
caused by overfilling an input buffer or reading from an empty output
buffer.
EXAMPLES
--------
In the examples, the following '.gitattributes' file is used:
---------------
*.java diff=java -crlf myAttr
NoMyAttr.java !myAttr
README caveat=unspecified
---------------
* Listing a single attribute:
---------------
$ git check-attr diff org/example/MyClass.java
org/example/MyClass.java: diff: java
---------------
* Listing multiple attributes for a file:
---------------
$ git check-attr crlf diff myAttr -- org/example/MyClass.java
org/example/MyClass.java: crlf: unset
org/example/MyClass.java: diff: java
org/example/MyClass.java: myAttr: set
---------------
* Listing all attributes for a file:
---------------
$ git check-attr --all -- org/example/MyClass.java
org/example/MyClass.java: diff: java
org/example/MyClass.java: myAttr: set
---------------
* Listing an attribute for multiple files:
---------------
$ git check-attr myAttr -- org/example/MyClass.java org/example/NoMyAttr.java
org/example/MyClass.java: myAttr: set
org/example/NoMyAttr.java: myAttr: unspecified
---------------
* Not all values are equally unambiguous:
---------------
$ git check-attr caveat README
README: caveat: unspecified
---------------
SEE ALSO
--------
linkgit:gitattributes[5].
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite