Re: Bug: UTF-16, UCS-4 and non-existing encodings for git log result in incorrect behavior

> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 7:15 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > [re Cc:ing the list]
> >
> > On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, Constantine Plotnikov wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 5:22 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> >> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, 12 Nov 2008, Constantine Plotnikov wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> If UTF-16[BE|LE] or UCS-4[BE|LE] encodings are used with git log, 
> >> >> the git completes successfully but commit messages and author 
> >> >> information are not shown. I suggest that git should fail with 
> >> >> fatal error if such zero producing encoding is used.
> >> >>
> >> >> If the incorrect encoding name is used, the git log does not 
> >> >> perform any re-encoding, but just display commits in their native 
> >> >> encoding. I suggest that git should fail with fatal error in this 
> >> >> case as well.
> >> >
> >> > Have you set the correct encoding with i18n.commitEncoding?  If 
> >> > not, you should not be surprised: Git's default encoding is UTF-8, 
> >> > and that fact is well documented, AFAICT.
> >> >
> >> Commit encoding is set correctly. The problem is that git log and git 
> >> show do not support the *output* encodings UTF-16 and UCS-4 and 
> >> silently fail in that case instead of reporting the error.
> >
> > That looks more like an iconv bug to me.  I assume you are using Windows?
> 
> Iconv has no way to know that git cannot work with ASCII-incompatible 
> encodings, and UTF-16 is incompatible, because it fills the output with 
> loads of zero bytes. Git both truncates messages on these bytes, and 
> forgets inserting them in strings that it produces itself.