Re: git-clean fails to remove a file whose name contains \\, ", or \n, TAB, etc.

On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 13:51:01 -0700, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

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"Jim" == Jim Meyering [off-list ref] writes:

Jim> Not that it matters (or maybe this is a feature :-), because people
Jim> who create such files in their working directory deserve what they
Jim> get, Eh? :-)

The problem is the newline in the string, since

  git-ls-files --others --directory $excl ${excl_info:+"$excl_info"} -- "$@" |
  while read -r file; do

is using newline as a delimiter.  Any file with a newline would mess this up.

Not being a shell programming expert, is there a way we could use -z and xargs
-0 here instead?

Unfortunately read does not have zero-delimited mode (at all). Unfortunately
the backquote expansion does not preserve whitespace correctly, so it's not
possible to use something like head.

Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to feed newline to read
(without -r flag), because the rules say that '\<NL>' => '' and
'\<something>' => '<something>'.

Than I can't think of anything other than xargs -0. Unfortunately that is an
external command, which only handles simple commands. So the question becomes
how to give it a simple command. Well, there would be two ways:

 - A simple command might be:
	sh -c 'arbitrarily complex command' dummy arguments...
   (the "dummy" will become $0),
   so you can simply put the whole loop in single quotes, use for file; do
   instead of while read -r file; do and be done.

 - Reinvoke the program with special argument meaning it should run the inner
   loop. Ie. add an option --inner-loop option, that would run the
   inner loop and terminate and use xargs -0 "$0" --inner-loop

Both solutions require exporting all the necessary variables.

-- 
						 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec [off-list ref]