From e6895c3f971dc4d60f7a9fac6ef41a6593a37ba9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Dragan Simic Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:06:08 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] config.txt: describe handling of whitespace further Make it more clear what the whitespace characters are in the context of git configuration files, and significantly improve the description of the leading and trailing whitespace handling, especially how it works out together with the presence of inline comments. Helped-by: Junio C Hamano Helped-by: Eric Sunshine Signed-off-by: Dragan Simic Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/config.txt | 26 ++++++++++++++------------ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt index 229b63a454..d8dd1a71e7 100644 --- a/Documentation/config.txt +++ b/Documentation/config.txt @@ -22,9 +22,10 @@ multivalued. Syntax ~~~~~~ -The syntax is fairly flexible and permissive; whitespaces are mostly -ignored. The '#' and ';' characters begin comments to the end of line, -blank lines are ignored. +The syntax is fairly flexible and permissive. Whitespace characters, +which in this context are the space character (SP) and the horizontal +tabulation (HT), are mostly ignored. The '#' and ';' characters begin +comments to the end of line. Blank lines are ignored. The file consists of sections and variables. A section begins with the name of the section in square brackets and continues until the next @@ -63,16 +64,17 @@ the variable is the boolean "true"). The variable names are case-insensitive, allow only alphanumeric characters and `-`, and must start with an alphabetic character. -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. Leading whitespaces after 'name =', the remainder of the -line after the first comment character '#' or ';', and trailing -whitespaces of the line are discarded unless they are enclosed in -double quotes. Internal whitespaces within the value are retained -verbatim. +Whitespace characters surrounding `name`, `=` and `value` are discarded. +Internal whitespace characters within 'value' are retained verbatim. +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 backslash (`\`); the backslash and the end-of-line +characters are discarded. -Inside double quotes, double quote `"` and backslash `\` characters -must be escaped: use `\"` for `"` and `\\` for `\`. +If `value` needs to contain leading or trailing whitespace characters, +it must be enclosed in double quotation marks (`"`). Inside double quotation +marks, double quote (`"`) and backslash (`\`) characters must be escaped: +use `\"` for `"` and `\\` for `\`. The following escape sequences (beside `\"` and `\\`) are recognized: `\n` for newline character (NL), `\t` for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB)