X-Git-Url: https://git.tokkee.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=Documentation%2Fgit-rev-list.txt;h=3341d1b62f34fa99afcdab91da1191ceacc2c24f;hb=7c85d27429784c181ca633fb1465a9c651dbce8a;hp=a765cfa4d208ed42a9539c3f26192b2ba4ec05a5;hpb=b65954d1720960f888d1d51e51befb84e05018eb;p=git.git

diff --git a/Documentation/git-rev-list.txt b/Documentation/git-rev-list.txt
index a765cfa4d..3341d1b62 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-rev-list.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-rev-list.txt
@@ -51,20 +51,26 @@ SYNOPSIS
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
 
-Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order starting at the
-given commit(s), taking ancestry relationship into account.  This is
-useful to produce human-readable log output.
+List commits that are reachable by following the `parent` links from the
+given commit(s), but exclude commits that are reachable from the one(s)
+given with a '{caret}' in front of them.  The output is given in reverse
+chronological order by default.
 
-Commits which are stated with a preceding '{caret}' cause listing to
-stop at that point. Their parents are implied. Thus the following
-command:
+You can think of this as a set operation.  Commits given on the command
+line form a set of commits that are reachable from any of them, and then
+commits reachable from any of the ones given with '{caret}' in front are
+subtracted from that set.  The remaining commits are what comes out in the
+command's output.  Various other options and paths parameters can be used
+to further limit the result.
+
+Thus, the following command:
 
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 	$ git rev-list foo bar ^baz
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-means "list all the commits which are included in 'foo' and 'bar', but
-not in 'baz'".
+means "list all the commits which are reachable from 'foo' or 'bar', but
+not from 'baz'".
 
 A special notation "'<commit1>'..'<commit2>'" can be used as a
 short-hand for "{caret}'<commit1>' '<commit2>'". For example, either of
@@ -84,7 +90,7 @@ between the two operands.  The following two commands are equivalent:
 	$ git rev-list A...B
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-'git-rev-list' is a very essential git program, since it
+'rev-list' is a very essential git command, since it
 provides the ability to build and traverse commit ancestry graphs. For
 this reason, it has a lot of different options that enables it to be
 used by commands as different as 'git-bisect' and