Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] test-lib: show missing prereq summary

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2021 14:10:43 -0800

Fabian Stelzer <[email-masked]> writes:

>>I am not sure '\n' is a good idea from portability perspective.  I
>>thought I wrote '\012' in the illustration in my review?
>
> Yes, i was wondering why you did that. When i played around with your
> variant i used \n since it's what i commonly use and find more readable.
> And i'm by far no expert on partability. What platforms would have an
> issue with \n ?

I think I misremembered.  b3b753b1 (Fit to Plan 9's ANSI/POSIX
compatibility layer, 2020-09-10) does talk about a system whose
"tr" does not fully emulate POSIX and wants an octal, but that
is not a platform we target for to begin with.

$ git grep '^[      ]*tr .*\\012['\''"]'
$ git grep '^[      ]*tr .*\\n['\''"]'

show the same number of hits, even back in v2.0.0.  You have to go
back to v1.6.0 (which I consider is the oldest and still usable
release of significance) to see the source tree without any hit for
the latter.  The first introduction of tr "\n" (which I consider is
a mistake---if we write octal, we do not have to worry about anybody
not supporting it) seems to be dea4562b (rerere forget path: forget
recorded resolution, 2009-12-25) made by me X-<.