Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/1] cat-file: quote-format name in error when using -z

From: Toon Claes <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2022 06:31:40 +0100

Phillip Wood <[email-masked]> writes:

> Thanks for working on this. I'd previously suggested NUL terminating the output
> of "git cat-file -z" to avoid this problem [1]
>
> [1]
> https://lore.kernel.org/git/[email-masked]/

What happened to this proposal? I don't see any replies to that. That's
a bit sad, because it would have been nice to have it this behavior from
the start.

> but quoting the object name is a better solution.

I would not say it's a better solution, but it's a less invasive
solution that /minimizes/ breaking changes. Ideally I'd like to have NUL
terminated output for "git cat-file -z". In a success situation I
assume this would return:

    <oid> SP <type> SP <size> NUL
    <contents> NUL

In a failure situation something like:

    <object> SP missing NUL

So when you pass -z you can keep reading until the first NUL and then
you'll know if you should read for contents as well.

Would you consider change behavior to this now?

--
Toon