Re: [PATCH v3 3/4] parse_commit(): handle broken whitespace-only timestamp

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2023 at 09:20:53AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >> I did also allow "-" here, which may be controversial, as we don't
> >> currently support negative timestamps. My reasoning was two-fold. One,
> >> the design of parse_timestamp() is such that we should be able to easily
> >> switch it to handling signed values, and this otherwise creates a
> >> hard-to-find gotcha that anybody doing that work would get tripped up
> >> on. And two, the status quo is that we currently parse them, though the
> >> result of course ends up as a very large unsigned value (which is likely
> >> to just get clamped to "0" for display anyway, since our date routines
> >> can't handle it).
> >
> > I think this makes a good case for accepting '-'. The commit message
> > is well explained as always :-) This all looks good to me apart from a
> > query about one of the tests.
> 
> I agree.  I was somewhat surprised that the big comment before that
> code did not mention it, but hopefully those who would be tempted to
> remove the check for '-' would either be careful enough themselves
> or be stopped by reviewers who are careful enough to go back to the
> log message of the commit that added the check in the first place,
> so it is OK.

Hmph, I thought I did write something in that comment. But I think in
the end I just migrated it to the commit message (and skimming my reflog
I don't think it even made it as far as a commit).

I think it's OK. I was mostly trying to help out Future Peff, who has a
series almost completed to handle negative timestamps. But I think the
worst case is that the tests in that new series would fail, and I'd
figure it out. :)

-Peff