Remove dead array assignment that breaks .githelpers under dash

[nonreagent]

What

Delete one dead line from switch_recent_branches_by_index in .githelpers:

 switch_recent_branches_by_index() {
-  local branches=($(list_branches_by_relative_commit | awk '{print $NF}'))
   local current_branch=$(git branch --show-current)

branches is assigned and then never read — the function pipes list_branches_by_relative_commit straight into fzf a few lines down. It's leftover from a pre-fzf implementation.

Why it matters

Git runs !-prefixed aliases through /bin/sh. On Debian/Ubuntu (and the exe.dev VMs), /bin/sh is dash. When an alias like git l does !. ~/.githelpers && pretty_git_log, dash sources the file — and dash parses the entire file before executing anything. The bash array literal name=(...) is the one bit of syntax dash can't parse, so it aborts:

$ git l
.githelpers: 228: Syntax error: "(" unexpected (expecting "}")

That isn't isolated to the fzf switcher — it takes down every alias that sources this file (l, b, bs, lb, opb, pb, …), since none of them get past the parse. Removing the dead line fixes all of them.

The [[ ]] uses elsewhere in the file parse fine under dash (they only fail at runtime, inside their own functions) — this array literal was the sole parse-level bashism.

Verification

dash -n .githelpers            # parses clean
sh -c '. ./.githelpers'        # sources OK (was: Syntax error)
bash -c '. ./.githelpers && type switch_recent_branches_by_index'   # fn still defined

No behavior change on systems where /bin/sh is bash — the line was dead there too.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code