This one is hard to google because it’s about punctuation… is there a reason that pants uses

::

(two colons) instead of

...

like other similar build systems? One fewer character to type? Four dots are better than three? 😉

I honestly don’t remember, @enough-analyst-54434, does this come to mind?

No clue, but there were no similar (open) build systems on Pants birth date.

I don't know if it was early Windows, or just DOS days - but

cd ...

would go up two directories if memory serves

`...`is a Perforce thing. No surprise Bazel uses it

@enough-analyst-54434: a past version of you introduced the syntax in https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/commit/fb3cd10bfc67a5ecf58d1d6b1463de2cf6ae8ab6 more than 10 years ago 🙂.

Copy code

Add support for : and :: syntax to select all sibling and all descendant targets, deprecate the corresponding --all and --all-recursive flags

Aha. Yeah, : <-> sibling language makes sense. It just rolls from there.

awesome, thanks!