From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:32:03 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 4/4] config.txt: describe handling of whitespace further
Message-ID: <xmqq8r2cca6k.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CAPig+cSYhYBa0NsvJCOYo4JsWzLJT9rU++U1QKA3jRB6Cptbhw@mail.gmail.com>

Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:

>     Whitespace surrounding `name`, `=` and `value` is ignored. If
>     `value` is surrounding by double quotation marks (`"`), all
>     characters within the quoted string are retained verbatim,
>     including whitespace. Comments starting with either `#` or `;` and
>     extending to the end of line are discarded. A line that defines a
>     value can be continued to the next line by ending it with a `\`;
>     the backslash and the end-of-line are stripped.

Nice, but I am not sure how this captures how whitespaces between
value and comment are handled, e.g., in this line

	|  name = value # comment$

humans know the space before '#' is removed because it is
"whitespace surrounding value".  But there is a bit of chicken and
egg problem; before you realize '# comment' is a comment and strip
it from the line, you do not know where value ends, so your reading
of the above need to backtrack.