On Thu, Sep 11, 2025, at 15:24, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:

Our documentation for git-config(1) has a section where it explains how
to parse and use colors as Git would configure them. In order to get the

Okay.  This is simple to find with a `color` search.

ANSI color escape sequence to reset the colors to normal we recommend
the following command:

    $ git config get --type=color --default="reset" ""

What this command is supposed to do is to not parse any configuration
key at all.

Or

    This command is not supposed to parse any configuration keys.

Instead, it is expected to parse the "reset" default value
and turn it into a proper ANSI color escape sequence.

It was reported though [1] that this command doesn't work:

    $ git config get --type=color --default="reset" ""
    error: key does not contain a section:

This error was introduced with 4e51389000 (builtin/config: introduce

IMO s/with/in/ ?

"get" subcommand, 2024-05-06), where we introduced the new "get"

nit: s/introduced the new/introduced the/

subcommand to retrieve configuration values. The preimage of that commit
used `git config --get-color "" "reset"` instead, which still works
nowadays.

nit: s/still works nowadays/still works/

This use case is really quite specific to parsing colors, as it wouldn't

s/use case/use-case/

make sense to give git-config(1) a default value and an empty config key
only to return that default value unmodified. But with `--type=color` we
don't return the value directly, but we instead parse the value into an
ANSI escape sequence.

Two “but”?  Maybe

    But with `--type=color` we don't return the value directly; we
    instead parse the value into an ANSI escape sequence.

As such, we can easily special-case this one use case: if the provided

s/use case/use-case/

Like special-case.

As such, we can easily special-case this one use case: if the provided
config key is empty, the user is asking for a color code and the user
has provided a value, then we call `get_color()` directly. Do so to
make the documented command work as expected.

In my opinion this is more difficult to read without an Oxford comma.
A bullet list could break up the serial comma and the comma used to
separate the “then” subclause.

    use-case:

    - if the provided config key is empty;

    - the user is asking for a color code; and

    - the user has provided a value,

    then we ...

In any case: I think a colon generally means that semicolon will be used
instead of serial comma.

[1]: [ref]

Reported-by: SZEDER Gábor <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Patrick Steinhardt <redacted>
[snip too technical diff]