On Tue, Nov 05, 2024 at 05:18:10PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > This raises the question of what can be done to parse ')' in values of
> > the format correctly. It seems to me like a clean solution would
> > involve a huge refactoring involving a large portion of ref-filter but I
> > maybe wrong.
>
> Yes, so I wouldn't even call the current behaviour "bug". The
> language is merely "limited" and the user cannot express certain
> values with it at all.
Agreed. I think we may have discussed this quoting problem before, but
it's not usually a big deal because the set of likely values is quite
limited. Most of them are just keywords or numeric values. I _think_
that the equals/notequals parameters of %(if) are the only ones.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't make things better if we can. Just that
I am not too surprised nobody has run into it before.
> Having said that, I just tried this
>
> $ git for-each-ref --format='%28%(refname)%29' refs/heads/master
> (refs/heads/master)
>
> So, if there is anything that needs "fixing", wouldn't it be
> documentation?
>
> If I knew (or easily find out from "git for-each-ref --help") that
> hex escapes %XX can be used, I wouldn't have written any of what I
> said before "Having said that" in this response.
I tried something similar, but I don't think it quite works for the case
in question. Within %(if:equals=<foo>) we do not further expand the
<foo> value (at least from my limited tests). And so something like:
git for-each-ref --format='%(if:equals=ref-with-%29)%(refname:short)...etc'
would never match "ref-with-(", but only a literal "ref-with-%29".
I am tempted to say the solution is to expand that "equals" value, and
possibly add some less-arcane version of the character (maybe "%)"?).
But it be a break in backwards compatibility if somebody is trying to
match literal %-chars in their "if" block.
Another option: in the rest of the "if" design we tried to keep
arbitrary text outside of the parentheses. So you could imagine a syntax
like:
%(if:equals)ref-with-)%(foo)%(refname:short)%(then)...%(end)
where %(foo) is some placeholder that separate the two arguments to the
"equals". In sane languages that is a space or a comma, but I'm not sure
that works here. We have %(end) which would otherwise be a syntax error
here, but it feels word. I dunno. The whole language is kind of
hideously verbose. I feel sorry for anybody trying to write non-trivial
formats. :)
-Peff
