Re: [PATCH] Add --show-size to git log to print message size

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Jul 15, 2007, 18:14 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0707151110520.20061@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <e5bfff550707150529l7e9bdd9fu253d38f99d4d2ed7@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007, Marco Costalba wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>
> To further push for git patch, please check this from current linux tree:
> 
> git log --parents --pretty=raw -z -r -p c4201214
> 
> As you can see the diff contains a '\0' value (actually removed by the patch).

So arguably maybe we should have turned that patch into a binary patch, but then it would have been really hard to read, and GNU patch and friends couldn't have read it.

So I think a better option would be:

> qgit of course fails, as any tool based on parsing '\0' delimiting
> character records. If the size of the patch was explicitly given
> instead no fail will occur.

You have an alternate fix, namely to only look at the NUL character at newline boundaries. Also, when it comes to "git log", you actually know even more: each commit begins with "commit".

A patch will always be nicely line-oriented, and will never have a NULL at the *beginning* of a line.

So you could actually make the parsing really strict, and look for the sequence

	'\n\0commit '

and that's a very trustworthy delimeter.

But yes, you can have NUL-characters in the middle of patches.

		Linus