"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Hi all, > > I have a strange situation and need help with resolving funky characters in > .git/config. My situation is this: > > [diff "*.dat"] > textconv = enscribe-conv > --format=-a1\(A=-a1,-a16,-a32\|P=-a1,-a32,-a16\|=-a1,-d,a14\),-a224 > > Basically this is a formatter for diff so that I can show structured binary > data. The unquoted syntax of the format string is: > --format=-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224 > > Content is not really important. The issue is that git is reporting fatal: > bad config line 2 in file .git/config when I escape the (, ), and | > characters. That failure is understandable, as The following escape sequences (beside `\"` and `\\`) are recognized: `\n` for newline character (NL), `\t` for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB) and `\b` for backspace (BS). Other char escape sequences (including octal escape sequences) are invalid. is what Documentation/config.txt says. \(, \) and \| is not a way to escape these letters from the .git/config parser (they do not need to be escaped from .git/config parser).. > I get syntax errors otherwise from the shell running the > textconv. I have tried > --format="-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224", to no > avail. Would textconv = enscribe-conv --format=\"-a1(A=...,-a224\" work? We want to show the shell what you wrote so that pipes and parens are inside a dq pair, but the .git/config language strips pair of dq, so the .git/config language parser needs to be told that these dq are not for it to eat.