Re: [PATCH 1/3] config.txt: describe whitespace characters further and more accurately

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 14, 2024, 16:45 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh6h8wymc.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <ff7b0a2ead90ad9a9456141da5e4df4a@manjaro.org>

Dragan Simic <dsimic@manjaro.org> writes:

> Though, further investigation shows that setting a configuration value,
> by invoking git-config(1), converts value-internal tabs into "\t" escape
> sequences, which the value-parsing logic doesn't "squash" into spaces.

Correct. It would have been nicer to just quote values that had whitespaces in them, but replacing HT to SP while turning HT that comes from our tool into "\t" would still let the value round-trip, while breaking anything written manually in editors. If you stay within Git without using any editor, what ebdaae37 (config: Keep inner whitespace verbatim, 2009-07-30) left us is at least internally consistent.

> I'd be happy to include the bugfix into this series, if my
> above-mentioned
> fears prove to be unnecessary.

Documenting status quo is a good place to stop for now. I do not know if it is a good idea to add too many tests to etch the current behaviour that we know is wrong and we'll need to update when we fix the bug, though.

Thanks.