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Comment by speeder | Hacker News Reader

I don't understood the suicidal git thing...

Also of course I had to test the help commands!

git branch --help opens man

git branch -h throws those short commandline help summaries.

Interestingly, -h does not mention -h itself or --help, so the only way to know that --help exists, is someone else telling you, you will never find on your own.

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-h is not a valid option. You could put --floogahbar in there and it'll give you the help by way of response.

Actually, "-h" is not a valid option on "git", but it is on "git branch" (somewhat confusingly). Try "git branch -j" to see what happens when you pass a bad option. In particular, try that when your cwd isn't a git repository.

> Interestingly, -h does not mention -h itself or --help, so the only way to know that --help exists, is someone else telling you, you will never find on your own.

I've found the --help option on probably a dozen commands without ever being specifically told that --help was a valid option.

If you have trouble discovering it you might want to look inward, at least for that particular well-known option.

Or by using every other Unix command ever.

(Disclaimer: This is a hyperbole.)

In every other Unix command ever, -h is the same as --help. Having used -h, I would never try --help if I was looking for something different.

The 'suicidal' example was git -h branch:

   $ git -h branch
   [blargh]

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