"Kristoffer Haugsbakk" <code@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >I realize that this series is going to be merged to `master`.[1] I was >trying out this new change since I might have some use for it when the >next version is released. I'm glad there are use cases for the topic. >The test case[2] `append: specify an empty separator` demonstrates that >`--separator=""` is the same as the default behavior, namely to add a >blank line. It has (according to the commit messages) been like this >since v5 of this patch.[3] > >v4 of this patch special-cased `--separator=""` to mean “no >separator”. And this was the same behavior as the original >`--no-blankline`,[4] which eventually mutated into `--separator`. > >Why was this changed to act the same as the default behavior (add a >blank line)? I can’t seem to find a note for it on the cover letter of >v5 or in the relevant replies. > >It seemed that v4 of this patch (with special-cased empty argument) was >perhaps based on Eric Sunshine’s suggestion:[5] > >> Taking a step back, perhaps think of this in terms of "separator". The >> default behavior is to insert "\n" as a separator between notes. If >> you add a --separator option, then users could supply their own >> separator, such as "----\n" or, in your case, "" to suppress the blank >> line. > >(And then reiterated in a v4 email [6]) There is indeed this change in the process, I did not express it clearly in the patch, sorry, allow me to explain it: Initially, I wanted to support separator insertion with --[no-]blankline. It was intuitive and clear in logic. If it is specified as --blankline, newline would be append, if it is --no-blankline, newline would not be append, and --blankline would be the default behavior. The problem with this is that "blankline" might not be a good name because it doesn't seem to express the meaning of the separator or paragraph-break, and since we're going to support separators, it might be more thorough to support a custom separator, which is a better solution I think. Returning to the issue of -separator = "", my thought is that I want --separator="" to behave the same way as --separator="<any-string-without-a-trailing-\n'>" when deals a string which does not contains a trailing newline. This will eliminate one more implicit logic and make behavior more consistent. >Was the idea perhaps to eventually (separately) add a separate option >which functions like `--each-message-is-line-not-paragraph`, like what >was mentioned in [7]? I think --no-separator maybe a better name, means that not any separator will be append between two paragraphs even a newline. Thanks.
