Re: [Question] Complex textconv text

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 14, 2018, 03:12 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqo99odcou.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <004501d492f5$98f0fcc0$cad2f640$@nexbridge.com>

"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Hi all,
>
> I have a strange situation and need help with resolving funky characters in
> .git/config. My situation is this:
>
> [diff "*.dat"]
> 	textconv = enscribe-conv
> --format=-a1\(A=-a1,-a16,-a32\|P=-a1,-a32,-a16\|=-a1,-d,a14\),-a224
>
> Basically this is a formatter for diff so that I can show structured binary
> data. The unquoted syntax of the format string is:
>  --format=-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224
>
> Content is not really important. The issue is that git is reporting fatal:
> bad config line 2 in file .git/config when I escape the (, ), and |
> characters.

That failure is understandable, as

    The following escape sequences (beside `\"` and `\\`) are recognized:
    `\n` for newline character (NL), `\t` for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB)
    and `\b` for backspace (BS).  Other char escape sequences (including octal
    escape sequences) are invalid.

is what Documentation/config.txt says. $, $ and \| is not a way to escape these letters from the .git/config parser (they do not need to be escaped from .git/config parser)..

> I get syntax errors otherwise from the shell running the
> textconv. I have tried
> --format="-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224", to no
> avail.

Would

	textconv = enscribe-conv --format=\"-a1(A=...,-a224\"

work?

We want to show the shell what you wrote so that pipes and parens are inside a dq pair, but the .git/config language strips pair of dq, so the .git/config language parser needs to be told that these dq are not for it to eat.