Re: Extra pair of double quotes in "git commit" output?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 25, 2008, 23:25 UTC
Message-ID: <20081125232521.GC30942@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20081126064906.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 06:49:06AM +0900, Nanako Shiraishi wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> While I think the way recent "git commit" displays the commit you just
> created is very helpful, I often find the double quotes around the
> message unnecessary and sometimes even confusing.  I just made a
> commit and saw this message:
> 
>     [master]: created d9a5491: "Show "standard deviation" column in table 3"

While I do think that typographically the embedded quotes look awful, I find that the quotes do help separate the commit subject from the other text when there are colons in the subject. IOW, I think that

  [master]: created d9a5491: foo: bar

is harder to read than

  [master]: created d9a5491: "foo: bar"

And 47% of commits in git.git have a colon (only 7% have a double quote).

So I sympathize with the desire to remove the quotes, as they look bad and are obviously not too rare. But I'd like to find a solution which maintains a better visual separation between the subject and the other text than simply removing them.

-Peff