Re: [PATCH] fast-import docs: LT is valid in email, GT is not

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 24, 2010, 16:12 UTC
Message-ID: <20100424161236.GB14690@progeny.tock>
In-Reply-To: <1272069944-20626-1-git-send-email-lodatom@gmail.com>

Hi Mark,

Mark Lodato wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> +++ b/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt
> @@ -394,7 +394,7 @@ Here `<name>` is the person's display name (for example
>  and greater-than (\x3e) symbols.  These are required to delimit
>  the email address from the other fields in the line.  Note that
>  `<name>` is free-form and may contain any sequence of bytes, except
> -`LT` and `LF`.  It is typically UTF-8 encoded.
> +`GT` and `LF`.  It is typically UTF-8 encoded.

	Here <name> is the person’s display name (for example
	“Com M Itter”)

So the original text is correct --- a <name> cannot contain LT because a less-than sign marks the boundary between a name and email address.

Maybe you were wondering what characters are valid in an e-mail address? The comments in fast-import.c and code in ident.c are consistent about this: the forbidden characters are <, >, and LF, though no one seems to check (see also my other reply). A patch to explain this (including a reference to git-commit-tree(1), I guess) might be useful.

git won’t understand an email with embedded > or LF. I’m not sure a < would cause problems, but I don’t mind that it is disallowed.

Hope that helps, Jonathan