Here's my alias for interactively rebasing, by default onto the point where my branch diverged from develop.
git config --global alias.ri '!git rebase -i ${1-$(git merge-base HEAD origin/develop)} #'
Without commenting out the rest of the line with #, writing git ri develop would get me git rebase -i develop develop. But with the #, I cannot add other arguments such as -Xtheirs. How can I allow arguments with default values while also having any number of other arguments?
One approach would be to add a dozen arguments with empty defaults: ${2-} ${3-} and so on. But I'm hoping for something more elegant.
In the case of OP, simply replacing ${1- with ${@- works, since the rest of the arguments go right after the first. There are different ways to get all parameters: $@ vs $* vs "$@" vs "$*". See here for the differences.
However, none of these ways work in another case: when I try to alias cf as config --global with default value -l. For example, git cf alias.rs 'restore -s': here $@ turns the arguments into alias.rs restore -s, losing the quotes. The same issue occurs if I write the alias as a shell function.
It's better to let the alias look at the arguments without handling them directly, so you don't need to end with #:
git config --global alias.cf '!if [[ -z $1 ]]; then arg="-l"; else arg=""; fi; git config --global $arg'
Shorter version:
git config --global alias.cf '!git config --global $([[ -z $1 ]] && echo -l)'