On Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 12:11:00AM -0500, Eric Sunshine wrote:

Several tests assign the output of `$(...)` command substitution to an
"expect" variable, taking advantage of the fact that `$(...)` folds out
the final line terminator while leaving internal line terminators
intact. They do this because the "actual" string with which "expect"
will be compared is shaped the same way. However, this intent (having
internal line terminators, but no final line terminator) is not
necessarily obvious at first glance and may confuse casual readers. The
intent can be made more obvious by using `printf` instead, with which
line termination is stated clearly:

    printf "sixth\nthird"

In fact, many other tests in this script already use `printf` for
precisely this purpose, thus it is an established pattern. Therefore,
convert these tests to employ `printf`, as well.

Seems reasonable. I don't think these tests actually care about the lack
of trailing newline, so another option is to use tformat. Or its shorter
cousin, --format. E.g.:

-	actual=$(git log --pretty="format:%s" --diff-filter=M HEAD) &&
-	expect=$(echo second) &&
-	verbose test "$actual" = "$expect"
+	git log --pretty="format:%s" --diff-filter=M HEAD >actual &&
+	printf "second" >expect &&
+	test_cmp expect actual

becomes:

  git log --format=%s --diff-filter=M HEAD >actual &&
  echo second >expect &&
  test_cmp expect actual

which is even less magical. But if the existing pattern is there in
nearby tests, I don't have any problem with following it.

While at it, modernize the tests to use test_cmp() to compare the
expected and actual output rather than using the semi-deprecated
`verbose test "$x" = "$y"`.

Yay. Happy to see more "verbose" calls cleaned up.

-Peff