Re: [Question] Complex textconv text

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I have a strange situation and need help with resolving funky characters in
> .git/config. My situation is this:
>
> [diff "*.dat"]
> 	textconv = enscribe-conv
> --format=-a1\(A=-a1,-a16,-a32\|P=-a1,-a32,-a16\|=-a1,-d,a14\),-a224
>
> Basically this is a formatter for diff so that I can show structured binary
> data. The unquoted syntax of the format string is:
>  --format=-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224
>
> Content is not really important. The issue is that git is reporting fatal:
> bad config line 2 in file .git/config when I escape the (, ), and |
> characters.

That failure is understandable, as

    The following escape sequences (beside `\"` and `\\`) are recognized:
    `\n` for newline character (NL), `\t` for horizontal tabulation (HT, TAB)
    and `\b` for backspace (BS).  Other char escape sequences (including octal
    escape sequences) are invalid.

is what Documentation/config.txt says.  \(, \) and \| is not a way
to escape these letters from the .git/config parser (they do not
need to be escaped from .git/config parser)..

> I get syntax errors otherwise from the shell running the
> textconv. I have tried
> --format="-a1(A=-a1,-a16,-a32|P=-a1,-a32,-a16|=-a1,-d,a14),-a224", to no
> avail.

Would 

	textconv = enscribe-conv --format=\"-a1(A=...,-a224\"

work?

We want to show the shell what you wrote so that pipes and parens
are inside a dq pair, but the .git/config language strips pair of
dq, so the .git/config language parser needs to be told that these
dq are not for it to eat.