Re: email address handling

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Aug 1, 2008, 23:16 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808011608150.6819@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808011554350.6819@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:

>
> That's my argument here. Life is tough.  Not everthing is going to be 
> easy. Your solution would "work", but it would be a horrid piece of crap.

..and I really think that the

	"=?utf-8?q?S=2E=C3=87a=C4=9Flar?= Onur" <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

example should be the one that makes you say "Ok, you're right".

The undeniable fact is, if we kept things in that format, even your broken mailer wouldn't have corrupted it. You could cut-and-paste things, and they's show up correctly at the other end, regardless of whether the problem is with your mailer or with the cut-and-paste, or anything else.

So clearly, "=?utf-8?q?S=2E=C3=87a=C4=9Flar?= Onur" _must_ be the superior format that git should have used, no?

Because clearly that is the most automation-friendly thing that _never_ requires anybody to think at all, and you can cut-and-paste it between programs without ever having to worry about anything at all. No special characters, no special meanings, no need to worry about limitations of implementation.

So the fact that git completely FUCKS IT UP, and when you do 'git log' git will have corrupted this to

	Author: S.Çağlar Onur <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

is clearly git doing the wrong thing. Right?

WRONG.

The fact is, git does the right thing. And yes, it means that you cannot just blindly cut-and-paste. And yes, it means that your mailer actually has to work right for you to even -see- the right email address. And yes, it means that any number of things can screw up, and corrupt it.

But it is STILL the right thing. Because what matters more than your ability to cut-and-paste or anything like that is the fact that we should make things look sane.

The thing is, you can actually get git to output the crazy names. Just do

	git show --pretty=email 37a4c940749670671adab211a2d9c9fed9f3f757

and now you get the email-prettified thing for at least the author. No, git won't corrupt the actual message, so the Signed-off-by: lines will still show Çağlar's first name, but you can actually get back that odd format.

(In fact, --pretty=email will do it as

	From: =?utf-8?q?S.=C3=87a=C4=9Flar=20Onur?= <caglar@pardus.org.tr>

which is admittedy _even_uglier_, but whatever.. The difference between really f*cking ugly and really f*cking uglier is not really relevant).

			Linus