Limit number of parent specifiers (i.e. ^^ or ..)

[analog-cbarber]

In practice, we have found that using too many ^^ or .. specifiers requires too much
mental gymnastics on the part of the reader and detract from readability.

We could either disallow more than one or two levels or we could add an
option to specify the max. Or we could simply recommend against too many
levels in the documentation.

[a-recknagel]

what about an alternative syntax to ^ using dots? since that's the unix-standard to specify paths, it might feel more natural:

[some function][^^.some_function]
# vs
[some function][...some_function]

[analog-cbarber]

You can already use dots instead of ^ just as you suggest. This issue is just about the ability to limit how many are allowed. In practice I have found that neither ...foo nor ^^.foo are that easy for users to mentally convert to what they refer to.

[a-recknagel]

Ah, properly understanding the title might have helped me there. fwiw, I haven't had that issue yet, and it's a kind of complexity that is inherent to the subject. Then again, my projects are usually rather flat, I don't have more than two levels of folders from top to bottom in my source code tree.