Re: [RFC/PATCH] pathspec: allow escaped query values

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 2, 2016, 05:46 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqy46ouorn.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <574F800D.6070107@ramsayjones.plus.com>

Ramsay Jones <ramsay@ramsayjones.plus.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> Not having given this much thought at all, but the question which comes
> to mind is: can you use some other separator for the <attr>-s rather than
> a comma? That way you don't need to quote them in the <value> part of the
> <attr>-spec.
>
> (I dunno, maybe use ; or : instead?)

There are two kinds of comma involved in this discussion.

 * Multiple pathspec magic can be attached to augment the way
   <pattern> selects paths. ":(<magic1>,<magic2>,...)<pattern>" is
   the syntax, and <magicN> are things like "icase" (select the path
   that matches <pattern> case-insensitively), "top" (<pattern> must
   match from the top level of the working tree, even when you are
   running the command from a subdirectory).  We added a new kind of
   <magic> whose syntax is "attr:VAR=VAL" recently, which says "not
   only <pattern> must match the path, in order to be selected, the
   path must have the attribute VAR with value VAL".

   The comma that separates multiple magic is not something you can
   change now; it has been with us since v1.7.6 (Jun 2011)

 * My example wanted to use the attr:VAR=VAL form to select those
   paths that has one specific string as the value for whitespace
   attribute, i.e. VAR in this case is "whitespace".  The value for
   whitespace attribute determines what kind of whitespace anomalies
   are considered as errors by "git apply" and "git diff", and it is
   formed by concatenating things like "indent-with-non-tab" (starts
   a line with more than 8 consecutive SPs), "space-before-tab" (a
   SP appears immediately before HT in the indent), etc., with a
   comma in between.

   The comma that separates various kinds of whitespace errors is
   not something you can change now; it has been with us since
   v1.5.4 (Feb 2008).

So using different separator is not a viable solution.