From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:50:00 GMT
Subject: Re: How pretty is pretty? git cat-file -p inconsistency
Message-ID: <m3r52o1hxr.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <4E8F6088.8060300@drmicha.warpmail.net>

Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net> writes:

[cut]
> I never knew how ugly the output of "git tag-file tree sha1" is. I guess
> it's the type of object whose format I don't know... We don't have an
> object format description in Doc/technical, do we? tree.c doesn't tell
> me much.

I had to handle this in my attempt to write "git blame <directory>" in Perl,
which was using `git cat-file --batch`, and that gives raw data and not
pretty-printed.

Tree object consist of zero or more entries.  Each item consist of mode,
filename, and sha1:

  <mode> SPC <filename> NUL <sha1>

where

1. <mode> is variable-length (!) text (!) containing mode of an
   entry. It encodes type of entry: if it is blob (including special
   case: symbolic link), tree i.e. directory, or a commit
   i.e. submodule.  Does not include leading zeros.

2. <filename> is variable-length null-terminated ("\0") name of a file
   or directory, or name of directory where submodule is attached

3. <sha1> is 40-bytes _binary_ identifier.

HTH
-- 
Jakub Narębski