From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:37:35 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] config: Add --null/-z option for null-delimted output
Message-ID: <7v645kyba8.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706190151160.4059@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> As for the FIXME: If you have a config like this:
>
> 	[core]
> 		Some = where
> 		over
> 		the = core.rainbow
>
> git-config -z would output something like this:
>
> 	core.some\0where\0core.over\0core.the\0core.rainbow\0
>
> Right?
>
> As you can see, it is quite hard for a parser to find out what is key, and 
> what is value. That FIXME is _exactly_ about this dilemma.
>
> IIRC I stated once that -z should output a value of "true" for these 
> cases, since they only make sense as booleans. But AFAIR nothing 
> conclusive came out of that thread.

I do not remember the thread, but I think that may make sense.
"over = 1", "over = true" etc. cannot be canonicalized to "true"
without knowing core.over is boolean, but core.over by itself
without any assignment cannot be anything but a boolean.

Another possibility, though, is to say:

	core.some\0where\0core.over\0\0core.the\0core.rainbow\0