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Re: Encoding multiple filenames in a single variable


From: Jon Seymour
Subject: Re: Encoding multiple filenames in a single variable
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:14:58 +1000

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:33 PM, Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:25:00PM +1000, Jon Seymour wrote:
>> I am working on an extension to git, and need to store a list of shell
>> files that can be used to extend the capabilities of the command I am
>> writing. Most of the time, a variable of the form:
>>
>> GIT_EXTRA_CONDITION_LIBS="libA.sh libB.sh" would work, but technically
>> speaking, I do need to support spaces in the path (if nothing else,
>> git's test suite cunningly runs within a directory that contains space
>> in the name :-).
>
> If this is an environment variable, then you're screwed.  Environment
> variables can't be arrays, and if they could, they surely wouldn't be
> portable.
>
>> In the end, what I have done is make use of git's rev-parse --sq-quote
>> feature to quote filenames that can contain spaces. That way, if you
>> really want spaces in the filenames, you can have it, but if you
>> don't, then you get the convenience of space as a separator.
>>

>> So, for example:
>>
>>     GIT_EXTRA_CONDITION_LIBS="libA.sh 'lib B.sh' libC.sh"
>
> What does it do with filenames that contain apostrophes?  How do you
> read the filenames back out of this format?  The only ways I can
> think of off the top of my head to parse that kind of input in a
> script are eval and xargs, and those should send you screaming....
>
> There really is no good way to put multiple filenames into a single
> environment variable.  Your best bet is to put them in a file and
> make the environment variable point to that file.  The contents of
> the file would have to be NUL-delimited or newline-delimited.  I'm
> pretty sure that you'll end up going with newline delimiters and just
> saying "if your filenames have newlines in them, you lose, so don't
> do that".  Which is not the worst approach in the world.
>

All good points. I think I'll change tack slighty. git has a
configuration mechanism that can server to store lists that users
might want to configure and I can add an --include option where
required to allow wrapper commands to add their own libraries, as
required, thus eliminating the requirement to inherit such lists from
the environment.

Thanks again.

jon.



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