conflict markers not documented

I can't find Git conflict markers documented anywhere. If I do

git pull git://icarus.com/~steve-icarus/verilog v0_8-branch

that results in files marked like this, for example

<<<<<<< HEAD:Attrib.cc
#ident "$Id: Attrib.cc,v 1.5 2002/08/12 01:34:58 steve Exp $"
=======
#ident "$Id: Attrib.cc,v 1.6 2004/02/20 18:53:33 steve Exp $"

The git-pull(1) Manual Page <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-pull.html> mentions conflicts in three places, but fails to document the markers or lead me to a page that does. The closest thing I've found is Git User's Manual (for version 1.5.3 or newer) <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html> with

<<<<<<< HEAD:file.txt
Hello world
=======
Goodbye

but it fails to explain which is which, only stating that "All you need to do is edit the files to resolve the conflicts ...". That's not enough information.

In _Essential CVS_ by Jennifer Vesperman, she documents (even more clearly than the Cederqvist) CVS conflict markers like this

<<<<<<< filename
sandbox content
=======
repository content

#ident "$Id: Attrib.cc,v 1.5 2002/08/12 01:34:58 steve Exp $"

was my Git repository content and

#ident "$Id: Attrib.cc,v 1.6 2004/02/20 18:53:33 steve Exp $"

was the other repository content (from which I fetched).

But I shouldn't need to refer to a CVS book to understand Git. Git's documentation should have made this clear. So I'm not writing this to ask for confirmation of my inference from the Git mailing list. I'm writing this to ask that the Git documentation be improved to adequately explain conflict markers.

Alan Feldstein

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http://www.alanfeldstein.com/

+1 585 415 6682