Re: [PATCH] fast-import docs: LT is valid in email, GT is not
From: Jonathan Nieder <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 22:48:42
Hi Mark, Mark Lodato wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
+++ b/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt@@ -394,7 +394,7 @@ Here `<name>` is the person's display name (for example and greater-than (\x3e) symbols. These are required to delimit the email address from the other fields in the line. Note that `<name>` is free-form and may contain any sequence of bytes, except -`LT` and `LF`. It is typically UTF-8 encoded. +`GT` and `LF`. It is typically UTF-8 encoded.
Here <name> is the person’s display name (for example “Com M Itter”) So the original text is correct --- a <name> cannot contain LT because a less-than sign marks the boundary between a name and email address. Maybe you were wondering what characters are valid in an e-mail address? The comments in fast-import.c and code in ident.c are consistent about this: the forbidden characters are <, >, and LF, though no one seems to check (see also my other reply). A patch to explain this (including a reference to git-commit-tree(1), I guess) might be useful. git won’t understand an email with embedded > or LF. I’m not sure a < would cause problems, but I don’t mind that it is disallowed. Hope that helps, Jonathan