Re: [PATCH 0/2] (experimental) diff --quote-path-with-sp

From: Gwyneth Morgan <gwymor@tilde.club>
Date: Sep 16, 2021, 03:33 UTC
Message-ID: <YUK7Bl9uzNE1YErg@tilde.club>
In-Reply-To: <20210915223316.1653443-1-gitster@pobox.com>

On 2021-09-15 15:33:14-0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Long time ago, we had a discussion with GNU patch/diff maintainer
> and agreed that pathnames with certain "difficult" bytes needs to be
> quoted to ensure the resulting patch is machine parseable in an
> unambiguous way [*1*].  Recently, we saw a report that found that
> GNU patch is unhappy with our diff output for a path with SP in it
> [*2*].
> 
> With this experimental option, the beginning part of the patch
> output will have pathnames with SP in them enclosed inside a pair of
> double quotes, like so:
> 
> 	diff --git "a/A Name" "b/A Name"
> 	--- "a/A Name"
> 	+++ "b/A Name"

I believe GNU patch is fine with unquoted spaces in the "--- a/path" and "+++ b/path", and only has an issue with unquoted spaces in the "diff --git" line. busybox patch does seem to have an issue with quoted filenames in the "---" and "+++" lines but is fine if those lines are unquoted. Maybe we could leave spaces unquoted in those lines, only quoted if there's some other character that needs it.