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Re: [PATCH] Give svnmucc ability to handle multiline properties

From: Julian Foad <julianfoad_at_btopenworld.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:59:27 +0100

On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 17:01 +0100, Purple Streak wrote:
> 2009/7/31 Geoff Rowell <geoff.rowell_at_gmail.com>:
> > Philip Martin <philip_at_codematters.co.uk> writes:
> >> When '\' escaping was added to svn:externals it changed how paths were
> >> interpreted by the command line client. That provides some sort of
> >> precedent for simply changing the behaviour of svnmucc. I'd prefer to
> >> see '\' as an escape character without any new command line option.
> >> I'd want enough escaping so that '\\' at the end of a line gave a
> >> literal '\'.
> >
> > I agree with Philip and Julian. As long as an escape is supported, I don't
> > see the need for another command line argument. I'd prefer to have backslash
> > as the continuation character.
>
> Sorry - but this _will_ break existing scripts on windows so I'm
> really not happy having I happen just by default. Also making
> windows users have to adjust there .bat files to double up \
> characters in paths is also not making it easy. On Unix this is the
> normal escape - but windows users don't have perl/python by default
> and a lot just use .bat files which don't have much processing power.

Yes.

> So I think we have to have the -c option both to enable the behaviour
> and to optionally specifiy a different character (I don't think this
> adds any complexity to usage - it's quite simple to follow and makes
> it more flexible).

I agree it would be quite simple to follow. The kind of "complexity" I
mentioned is the (small) amount of additional complexity a configurable
escape character would bring to the Subversion universe: for example,
you couldn't so easily share svnmucc script files with other people; and
a syntax-highlighting editor for svnmucc script files couldn't work
properly unless you also tell it what escape character you're using. But
I think that's OK if the configurability is important, and it seems to
be important. Or at least I agree it's useful to be able to use a
character other than backslash.

> The escaping for whatever character used would be
> nice I agree, but you'd only really want it at the end of the line
> which would be odd, so you'd have to have it all the way along which
> makes the code more complex than it needs to be imo.

I agree with Philip that '\\' at the end of a line (assuming the escape
character is '\') should mean a literal '\' at the end of the line, and
no continuation. Further, '\\\' at the end of a line should mean '\' and
continuation, '\\\\' should mean '\\', '\\\\\' should mean '\\' and
continuation, etc.

Without that ability to "escape the escape character", there would be no
way for a program to generate svnmucc scripts with arbitrary text in
property values and, while not the end of the world, that would be a
shame.

I don't see much extra code complexity in making the escape character be
escapable wherever it appears (not just at the end of a line), and I
think that would be best.

- Julian

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Received on 2009-08-12 01:59:57 CEST

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