From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 06:20:01 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Try URI quoting for embedded TAB and LF in pathnames
Message-ID: <87mzlgh8xa.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu>
In-Reply-To: <7vu0frpxs1.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> writes:

> Although 'GNU patch' has --quoting-style flag, it seems to be
> used only on its output side

Yes, that's right.

The convention I had been thinking of adding is to have GNU diff
use shell-quoting style, e.g.,

'three
o'\''clock'

to represent a file name with a newline and an apostrophe in it.
This sort of file name can be cut and pasted into the shell.
The quoting could be used with any file name containing a
troublesome character.

Perhaps another quoting style would be better.

An issue I hadn't really had time to think about is the character
encoding of file names.  E.g., suppose one file system uses UTF-8
encoding for Japanese file names, and another file system uses EUC-JP.
I suppose it would be nice to handle this problem too.  Perhaps GNU
'diff' could standardize on using UTF-8 in its file names, regardless
of what the underlying file system uses.  Another option is to pass
the bytes of the file name through, no matter what.  This might
require a runtime flag to diff, or to patch, or both.