Add core.quotepath configuration variable.

We always quote "unusual" byte values in a pathname using
C-string style, to make it safer for parsing scripts that do not
handle NUL separated records well (or just too lazy to bother).
The absolute minimum bytes that need to be quoted for this
purpose are TAB, LF (and other control characters), double quote
and backslash.

However, we have also always quoted the bytes in high 8-bit
range; this was partly because we were lazy and partly because
we were being cautious.

This introduces an internal "quote_path_fully" variable, and
core.quotepath configuration variable to control it.  When set
to false, it does not quote bytes in high 8-bit range anymore
but passes them intact.

The variable defaults to "true" to retain the traditional
behaviour for now.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index a2057d9d24..34b1c97102 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -117,6 +117,18 @@ core.fileMode::
 	the working copy are ignored; useful on broken filesystems like FAT.
 	See gitlink:git-update-index[1]. True by default.
 
+core.quotepath::
+	The commands that output paths (e.g. `ls-files`,
+	`diff`), when not given the `-z` option, will quote
+	"unusual" characters in the pathname by enclosing the
+	pathname in a double-quote pair and with backslashes the
+	same way strings in C source code are quoted.  If this
+	variable is set to false, the bytes higher than 0x80 are
+	not quoted but output as verbatim.  Note that double
+	quote, backslash and control characters are always
+	quoted without `-z` regardless of the setting of this
+	variable.
+
 core.autocrlf::
 	If true, makes git convert `CRLF` at the end of lines in text files to
 	`LF` when reading from the filesystem, and convert in reverse when