* Jeff King:

On Fri, Feb 06, 2026 at 09:59:31AM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:

quoted

Isn't the format-patch output already unambiguous because the sequence
of diffs is preceeded by the non-diff statistics section, and only then
the commit message follows?  It's just not possible to process this
correctly in one pass because only at the end of the input, you know
that you have just seen the to-be-applied diffs.

That diffstat is optional, and not parsed by the receiving format-patch
at all. Keep in mind that in the world for which it was originally
designed, people were not necessarily using Git to generate their
emails. They could be patches emailed by random folks using "diff"
themselves.

Is the git am format that flexible in practice?  I often have trouble
applying patches with git am that were created with git format-patch
and have to resort to plain old patch instead.  As a user, I definitely
get the impression that it's not a type of tool that gets a patch
out of an email message, no matter what the cost.

Thanks,
Florian