Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] config: Add --null/-z option for null-delimted output

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:56:00 +0200

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> Use \n as delimiter between key and value and \0 as
> delimiter after each key/value pair. This should be
> easily parsable output.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Frank Lichtenheld <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  builtin-config.c |   15 +++++++++++----
>  1 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

No documentation. But this is an RFC.
 
>  Note the FIXME. Does anyone remember the reason why --get-regexp
>  and --list use different output format?

I don't know, but at least two scripts use --get-regexp, namely
git-remote and git-submodule. So we would have to be careful about
changing that.

I would be enough to add the following to your patch:

> @@ -12,14 +12,16 @@ static int use_key_regexp;
>  static int do_all;
>  static int do_not_match;
>  static int seen;
> +static char delim = '=';
> +static char term = '\n';
  +static char key_delim = ' ';
>  static enum { T_RAW, T_INT, T_BOOL } type = T_RAW;
[...]
> @@ -39,6 +41,7 @@ static int show_config(const char* key_, const char* value_)
>  		return 0;
>  
>  	if (show_keys)
> +		/* FIXME: not useful with --null */
  - 		printf("%s ", key_);
  + 		printf("%s%c", key_, key_delim);
>  	if (seen && !do_all)
>  		dup_error = 1;
[...]
> @@ -155,6 +158,10 @@ int cmd_config(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  		}
>  		else if (!strcmp(argv[1], "--system"))
>  			setenv("GIT_CONFIG", ETC_GITCONFIG, 1);
> +		else if (!strcmp(argv[1], "--null") || !strcmp(argv[1], "-z")) {
> +			term = '\0';
> +			delim = '\n';
  +			key_delim = '\n';
> +		}
>  		else if (!strcmp(argv[1], "--rename-section")) {
>  			int ret;
>  			if (argc != 4)

By the way, I have tried to use git-config --null to redo config
file parsing in gitweb, so one git-config call would be needed for
all the config. I have noticed that --bool option description does
not describe the observed behavior fully. For example it returns
'true' not only for '1', but for any integer != 0, including 0xdeadbeef.

By the way, the error message when key value _cannot_ be converted to
the boolean is somewhat misleading:

  $ GIT_CONFIG=conftest git config --bool bool.key7
  fatal: bad config value for 'bool.key7' in conftest

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland