Subject: Confused about git-config's description of escaping

From: Kyle Meyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:24:47 -0400

When describing the configuration syntax, the git-config manpage says
this about the value:

    Inside double quotes, double quote " and backslash \ characters must
    be escaped: use \" for " and \\ for \.

I find the "Inside double quotes" part confusing because escaping these
characters appears to also be needed when there are no enclosing double
quotes:

    $ nl .git/config | tail -n2
         6	[a]
         7		b = c"d

    $ git config a.b
    fatal: bad config line 7 in file .git/config

    $ git version
    git version 2.28.0.236.gb10cc79966

I was going to suggest dropping the "Inside double quotes" qualifier.
Perhaps

    Double quote " and backslash \ characters in the value must
    be escaped: use \" for " and \\ for \.

But it looks like that's pretty close to how this sentence was written
before ff5507ed2a (Documentation/config.txt: describe the structure
first and then meaning, 2015-03-04), which makes me think that I'm
misreading the description or otherwise missing something.

What's gained by specifying "Inside double quotes"?  Are there any cases
where a value, whether enclosed in double quotes or not, doesn't need "
or \ characters escaped?