However, before coming up with a zillion suggestions about how to make
the syntax nicer, please do consider the idea that we did put a lot of
thought into the diff syntax, and that covering all the uses and edge
cases and is not easy.
Right. And I don't think most people disagree with that.
However, I also think that some sort of shorthand mechanism would greatly
help the "verbosity problem". We have a situation where the simplest
things are very short and very complex things are very long (both of which
are quite reasonable), but there doesn't seem to be much in the middle
and I think the issue is how to add that.
I think RTH's suggestion of using a "+" or similar symbol to indicate the
root is a good one. Another possibility (not mutually exclusive with that
one) is to have some shorthand like using ".." in a context where a URL
is required to "do the right thing". (Obviously an issue here is in
determining whether something is a URL or filename, so maybe something
like "%.." or "-.." is needed.)
