Re: [PATCH 2/4] add smudge-to-file and clean-from-file filter configuration

Junio C Hamano wrote:

One problem with this is that "appends" is subtly unclear in this case.

With the example of smugeToFile = cmd --to-file it seems that a space should be added by git before the filename.

On the other handle, consider smugeToFile = cmd --to-file= here a space is not wanted before the filename.

So, either a space is automatically included before the filename and the second example breaks, or no space is included, and to make the first example work would need careful inclusion of the trailing space with quoting to prevent it being elided eg, smugeToFile = "cmd --to-file "

%p does avoid this ambiguity. But as Junio noted, %p is mandatory in the command for it to possibly work. Git could refuse to use smugeToFile = cmd as not containing a %p and so not possibly being able to work.

Or we could pick one of the two methods of appending the file (I prefer not including a space before it as more flexible), and anything using this interface would need to design its command line parsing with this interface in mind, and would probably choose to use --to-file=foo rather than --to-file foo.