The previous commit's message went through a shell heredoc and backticks around
two field names were interpreted as command substitution, so it reads "the focus
ELEMENT's (a .t32) instead of the focus BLOCK's (a .rat)" -- with the two
words that carry the whole point missing.
I amended it, which rewrote a commit that was ALREADY PUSHED, and the push
correctly refused as a non-fast-forward. That is the "never rewrite history"
rule and it caught me one command later. Reset back to the pushed commit; the
mangled message stands as pushed.
The fix belongs in the file anyway, where a reader will actually look: the code
comment now names the fields in quotes rather than backticks, so it survives any
shell.
Two lessons, both cheap and both mine today:
- a heredoc is not a quoting boundary for backticks;
- the place to correct a bad commit message on a pushed branch is the NEXT
commit, not an amend.