@@ -232,12 +232,24 @@ Fields that have name-email-date tuple as its value (`author`,
`committer`, and `tagger`) can be suffixed with `name`, `email`,
and `date` to extract the named component.
-The complete message in a commit and tag object is `contents`.
-Its first line is `contents:subject`, where subject is the concatenation
-of all lines of the commit message up to the first blank line. The next
-line is `contents:body`, where body is all of the lines after the first
-blank line. The optional GPG signature is `contents:signature`. The
-first `N` lines of the message is obtained using `contents:lines=N`.
+The message in a commit or a tag object is `contents`, from which
+`contents:<part>` can be used to extract various parts out of:
+
+contents:subject::
+ The first paragraph of the message, which typically is a
+ single line, is taken as the "subject" of the commit or the
+ tag message.
+
+contents:body::
+ The remainder of the commit or the tag message that follows
+ the "subject".
+
+contents:signature::
+ The optional GPG signature of the tag.
+
+contents:lines=N::
+ The first `N` lines of the message.
+
Additionally, the trailers as interpreted by linkgit:git-interpret-trailers[1]
are obtained as `trailers` (or by using the historical alias
`contents:trailers`). Non-trailer lines from the trailer block can be omitted
Let's avoid a big dense paragraph by using an unordered list for the %(contents:XXXX) format specifiers. While at it let's also make the following improvements: - Let's not describe %(contents) using "complete message" as it's not clear what an incomplete message is. - Let's improve how the "subject" and "body" are described. - Let's state that "signature" is only available for tag objects. Suggested-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net> Signed-off-by: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> --- Documentation/git-for-each-ref.txt | 24 ++++++++++++++++++------ 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)