But what they thenproceeded to do was to have the nosort option sort just a tiny little bit anyway, for good measure. In my book that's not an unanticipated use case but questionable design. I am an old-fashioned git and think that an option should do what it says on the tin.
Anyway, horse dead, flogging ends here. T
One more lash to the dead horse: It's another example of something being 'too helpful'. But it's all water under the bridge now. As Bart says, too dangerous to tinker in the deepest entrails of the code. Still I do dream of zsh 6.0 where old traditions might be questioned, dead code cut out, compatibility with extinct shells no longer worried about, and so on.