I just got bit that when using the decorates syntax for a service definiton, that the decorates requires the service name without leading @.

As pointed out on the docs, this is correct:

bar:
  public: false
  class: stdClass
  decorates: foo
  arguments: ["@bar.inner"]

Yet I have written this code and thought it to be correct:

bar:
  public: false
  class: stdClass
  decorates: @foo
  arguments: ["@bar.inner"]

This then crashed by throwing a:

InvalidArgumentException in ContainerBuilder.php line 815:
The service definition "@foo" does not exist.

and it took me a bit and a xdebug session to figure out my typo.

Why isn't the @ here required for the service name? Is the current syntax inconsistent or do I lack an understanding of what the syntax refers to here? E.g. is the @ only used when a service is passed, and here it is only referencing a service name?

Maybe one can also improve the handling of Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder::getDefinition($id) to either strip an incomming @ from the beginning of the $id or throw a message like

The service definition "@foo" does not exist. Did you maybe mean "foo" instead?`