Re: [PATCH v4] Expand ~ and ~user in core.excludesfile, commit.template

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 02:29:00AM -0700, Karl Chen wrote:

 core.excludesfile::
 	In addition to '.gitignore' (per-directory) and
 	'.git/info/exclude', git looks into this file for patterns
-	of files which are not meant to be tracked.  See
+	of files which are not meant to be tracked.  "~" and "~user"
+	are expanded to the user's home directory.  See
 	linkgit:gitignore[5].

How about:

  A leading "~" or "~user" is expanded to the home directory of the
  current user or "user", as in the shell.

Specifically:

  1. We obviously handle only leading cases, so /path/to/~file~with~tildes
     is ok.

  2. It was a little unclear to me whether both "~" and "~user" expande
     to the same thing. I.e., can one use this for arbitrary "user" (and
     the answer of course is yes).

+char *expand_user_path(char *buf, const char *path, int bufsz)
+{
+	if (path == NULL)
+		return NULL;
+
+	if (path[0] != '~')
+		return concatstr(buf, path, NULL, bufsz);
+
+	const char *username = path + 1;
+	size_t username_len = strchrnul(username, '/') - username;
+	struct passwd *pw = getpw_str(username, username_len);

Declaration after statement (we try to remain portable to non-C99
systems).

Other than that, I think the patch is fine (though I am not opposed to
the improvements Junio has mentioned).

-Peff