Confused about git-config's description of escaping
From: Kyle Meyer <hidden>
Date: 2020-08-03 19:24:53
When describing the configuration syntax, the git-config manpage says
this about the value:
Inside double quotes, double quote " and backslash \ characters must
be escaped: use \" for " and \\ for \.
I find the "Inside double quotes" part confusing because escaping these
characters appears to also be needed when there are no enclosing double
quotes:
$ nl .git/config | tail -n2
6 [a]
7 b = c"d
$ git config a.b
fatal: bad config line 7 in file .git/config
$ git version
git version 2.28.0.236.gb10cc79966
I was going to suggest dropping the "Inside double quotes" qualifier.
Perhaps
Double quote " and backslash \ characters in the value must
be escaped: use \" for " and \\ for \.
But it looks like that's pretty close to how this sentence was written
before ff5507ed2a (Documentation/config.txt: describe the structure
first and then meaning, 2015-03-04), which makes me think that I'm
misreading the description or otherwise missing something.
What's gained by specifying "Inside double quotes"? Are there any cases
where a value, whether enclosed in double quotes or not, doesn't need "
or \ characters escaped?