Re: Unexpected git diff output during merge conflict

Ah, the whitespace that was added to enable the >>> markers to be
added... that makes sense.

Which means the output is correct and some assumptions my code makes
about the format of the Combined Diff are wrong.

Thanks!
Nick



On 8 February 2018 at 11:25, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 10:51:57AM +0000, Nick O'Leary wrote:

quoted

$ git diff README.md
diff --cc README.md
index 61d78b2,620d806..0000000

--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md

@@@ -1,7 -1,1 +1,11 @@@
 -This is my default readme
++<<<<<<< HEAD
 +merged-history-test
 +===================
 +
 +### About
 +
 +This is your project's README.md file. It helps users understand what your
- project does, how to use it and anything else they may need to know.
++project does, how to use it and anything else they may need to know.
++=======
++This is my default readme
++>>>>>>> dev

This does not look right to me. The 'This is my default readme' line
has ++ at the start - suggesting its new to both parent copies of the
file, which isn't the case - it came from the dev branch so should be
prefixed with '+ '.
I'm also not clear why the line beginning 'project does' has both a -
and ++ prefix.

Are you sure there aren't whitespace differences in those two lines?

For instance, if I do:

  # base commit
  git init
  git commit --allow-empty -m base

  # one side; note missing newline!
  printf 'this is my default readme' >file
  git add file
  git commit -m default

  # other side
  git checkout -b other HEAD^
  {
        echo this is a longer
        echo and more involved
        echo README
  } >file
  git add file
  git commit -m longer

  # and now merge and get a conflict
  git merge master

Then I get similar output to you.  The content with merge-conflicts
can't represent the original lack-of-newline for that file, because of
course there's another ">>>" line after it.

If I swap out the printf for echo, adding the newline, then it produces
the output you'd expect.

-Peff