Re: Why does "git config" output nothing instead of the default value for unset variables?

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

More to the point, I can easily imagine many scripts relying on git
config returning a value to indicate that a config item has been set.
Your proposed change would break all those. For that reason, it might
be nicer to introduce a flag that returns the config if it is set or
the default otherwise. Something like git config --value perhaps.

The expected output is certainly a problem, but the issue is more
fundamental than that: git-config does not even _know_ what the default
is for any given option.

Thanks for the explanation, I feared something like that. I.e. that
git config does not even know any of the options or values it manages,
but just is a "dumb" front-end to writing / reading whatever you pass
it to / from a file.

-- 
Sebastian Schuberth