Re: [PATCH] Document disabling core.whitespace values trailing-space and space-before-tab

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 25, 2008, 04:44 UTC
Message-ID: <7vbq0m608w.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080724172912.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

Nanako Shiraishi <nanako3@lavabit.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Quoting "Peter Valdemar Mrch (Lists)"  <4ux6as402@sneakemail.com>:
>
>> The '-trailing-space' syntax to disable the trailing-space setting is
>> not obvious and not documented as far as I can see. I would have
>> assumed a value of '' would disable it.
>>
>> Is there a documentation bug here? If so, I suggest this patch. I
>> didn't find anywhere else where the '-setting' syntax was used to
>> disable something.
>
> Doesn't gitattributes(5) describe the overall syntax in detail?

Yes, but as Peter says in his reply to you, it only talks about [-!]name syntax to force the variable to unset (with '-' prefix) and to revert the variable to the unspecified state (with '!' prefix).

Various "values" given to the whitespace attribute actually act as if they are sub-variables and obey the similar "[-]name" rule, but (1) that is left unsaid, and (2) in that context '!' does not make sense so only '-' has any meaning. We would certainly need to clarify that.

So I think Peter's patch is going in the right direction.