Re: Fix "git log -z" behaviour

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Linus Torvalds [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

For the normal case where the termination character is '\n', this 
obviously doesn't change anything at all, since we just switched two 
identical characters around. So it's very safe - it doesn't change any 
normal usage, but it definitely fixes "git log -z".

Gaah.

I have already applied this but I think this has fallout for
existing users of "-z --raw".  Nothing in-tree uses "git log" as
the upstream of a pipe as far as I know because in-tree stuff
tend to stick to plumbing when it comes to scripting, but I
think your patch would affect the plumbing level as well.

I think the new semantics for -z ("inter-record termination is
NUL") makes a lot more sense for "-p -z" format that shows
commit log message and the patch text.  It makes filtering the
output with "grep -z" feel much more natural.

The new semantics is however quite inconsistent with the other
formats: --raw, --name-only and --name-status.  These already
use NUL for separating pathnames and fields when -z is given, in
order to allow scripts sensibly deal with pathname that contain
funny characters (e.g. LF and HT).  Nobody is likely to feed
their output to "grep -z", but one problematic case I see is to
use this:

	git log -z --raw -r --pretty=raw $commit

or its equivalent:

	git rev-list $commit |
        git diff-tree --stdin --raw -r --pretty=raw

to prepare data to feed something like fast-import.

But such newly written scripts can read from non -z and unwrap
paths themselves just as easily (the pathname safety with NUL
was invented before we started using c-quote consistently), so
it might be Ok to leave them (slightly) broken.

So, I give up.