Re: [PATCH 1/1] cat-file: quote-format name in error when using -z

From: Toon Claes <toon@to1.studio>
Date: Dec 20, 2022, 05:31 UTC
Message-ID: <87a63i7h8h.fsf@to1.studio>
In-Reply-To: <93d61412-3786-b2b3-3fe8-4574336b08fb@dunelm.org.uk>

Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Thanks for working on this. I'd previously suggested NUL terminating the output
> of "git cat-file -z" to avoid this problem [1]
>
> [1]
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/66b71194-ad0e-18d0-e43b-71e5c47ba111@gmail.com/

What happened to this proposal? I don't see any replies to that. That's a bit sad, because it would have been nice to have it this behavior from the start.

> but quoting the object name is a better solution.

I would not say it's a better solution, but it's a less invasive solution that /minimizes/ breaking changes. Ideally I'd like to have NUL terminated output for "git cat-file -z". In a success situation I assume this would return:

    <oid> SP <type> SP <size> NUL
    <contents> NUL

In a failure situation something like:

    <object> SP missing NUL

So when you pass -z you can keep reading until the first NUL and then you'll know if you should read for contents as well.

Would you consider change behavior to this now?

-- Toon