Re: [PATCH 1.5/2] config: add options to list only variable names

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 10:11 PM, SZEDER Gábor [off-list ref] wrote:

Recenty I created a multi-line branch description with '.' and '='
characters on one of the lines, and noticed that fragments of that line
show up when completing set variable names for 'git config', e.g.:

  $ git config --get branch.b.description
  Branch description to fool the completion script with a
  second line containing dot . and equals = characters.
  $ git config --unset <TAB>
  ...
  second line containing dot . and equals
  ...

The completion script runs 'git config --list' and processes its output to
strip the values and keep only the variable names.  It does so by looking
for lines containing '.' and '=' and outputting everything before the '=',
which was fooled by my multi-line branch description.

A similar issue exists with aliases and pretty format aliases with
multi-line values, but in that case 'git config --get-regexp' is run and
subsequent lines don't have to contain either '.' or '=' to fool the
completion script.

Though 'git config' can produce null-terminated output for newline-safe
parsing, that's of no use in this case, becase we can't cope with nulls in
the shell.

Help the completion script by introducing the '--list-names' and
'--get-names-regexp' options, the "names-only" equivalents of '--list' and
'--get-regexp', so it doesn't have to separate variable names from their
values anymore.

Why don't you just add a '--name-only' option that can be used only
with '--list' and '--get-regexp'?

Like:

'git config' [<file-option>] [-z|--null] [--name-only] --get-regexp name_regex

and

'git config' [<file-option>] [-z|--null] [--name-only] -l | --list

?

It seems to me that it would reduce the number of options, and later
if we want to pass a format we could have maybe:

'git config' [<file-option>] [-z|--null] [--name-only |
--format=<format>] --get-regexp name_regex

and

'git config' [<file-option>] [-z|--null] [--name-only |
--format=<format>] -l | --list

Thanks,
Christian.