I call it unwanted because the default works fine with the actual input and explicitly limiting whitespace this way breaks most command substitution. For instance, attempting to check only new commits with range="$local_sha $( git for-each-ref --format='^%(refname)' refs/remotes/$remote )" # ... commit=`git rev-list -n 1 --grep '\bbad string\b' $range` fails, because the newlines are passed verbatim instead of being treated as whitespace. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/27392839/1290731 for the motivation. Sorry for the capsing, and also for presuming ESP. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html