Re: [PATCH] Specify a precision for the length of a subject string

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 23, 2011, 10:09 UTC
Message-ID: <20111223100957.GA1247@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20111221145112.GA13097@llunet.cs.wisc.edu>

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 08:51:13AM -0600, Nathan Panike wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> > Hmm. I think the idea of limiting is OK (though personally, I would just
> > pipe through a filter that truncates long lines). But I'm a bit negative
> > on adding a tweak like this that only affects the subject. Is there a
> > reason I couldn't do %30gs, or %30f, or even some other placeholder?
> 
> The ones that make sense to limit are all those that depend on the subject, as the
> above; it does not make sense to limit other fields that don't depend on the
> subject, as they are fixed width, or have small variance. And it does not make
> sense to me to limit the length of the body.

I agree the subject is the most likely place. I was thinking one might want to do it with the body, too. But whether it would be "I want N bytes of the body" or "truncate each body line at N bytes without wrapping", I don't know.

-Peff