Re: "man gitattributes" doesn't explain comma-separated attribute values

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Mar 16 2019, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>   more nitpicking, but i'm working my way through the intricacies of
> attributes and putting together some (allegedly) simple examples for a
> class i'm giving on monday, and i noted a couple possible shortcomings
> in "man gitattributes".
>
>   as a working example, i looked at the top-level .gitattributes file
> in the git source code itself, which opens with:
>
>   * whitespace=!indent,trail,space
>   *.[ch] whitespace=indent,trail,space diff=cpp
>   *.sh whitespace=indent,trail,space eol=lf
>   ... snip ...
>
> first observation is that i see nothing in the man page that explains
> the notion of a comma-separated list of attribute values. maybe i
> missed it or maybe it's supposed to be intuitively obvious, but
> there's nothing i can see that mentions the possibility.
>
>   related to that is that there is no explanation as to how to
> interpret:
>
>   * whitespace=!indent,trail,space
>
> does the "!" apply to "indent" or to the entire list? the man page
> doesn't say.
>
>   just being pedantic again.
>
> rday

It's documented in gitglossary, search for "attr". That's not an excuse
or a statement that that doesn't suck, just a pointer for anyone
interested in fixing the docs.