Re: [PATCH v9 4/6] notes.c: introduce '--separator=<paragraph-break>' option

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 16, 2023, 17:00 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqttwcus7p.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20230512040746.2069-1-tenglong.tl@alibaba-inc.com>

Teng Long <dyroneteng@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Returning to the issue of -separator = "", my thought is that I want
> --separator="" to behave the same way as
> --separator="<any-string-without-a-trailing-\n'>" when deals a string which does
> not contains a trailing newline. This will eliminate one more implicit logic and
> make behavior more consistent.

An obvious alternative would be to use the string given to the "--separator" option literally, I guess, and you can add your own newline if you want to. But most of the time you would not want to have an incomplete line, so appending the newline at the end by default does make sense.

Special casing an empty value to "--separator" as "nothing" does make sort-of sense. Using a blank line as the inter-paragraph separator is the default, and there is not much use in the "--separator=''" that becomes "--separator=$'\012'" automatically.

> I think --no-separator maybe a better name, means that not any separator will be
> append between two paragraphs even a newline.

It would work as well. Is it something we can safely add before merging the topic to upcoming -rc1?

Thanks.