Question

I am researching the best autocrlf setting for GIT and I am confused about what happens with code pasted into the editor if it is set to false. I notice many people recommend setting it to false, mentioning that as long as proper and properly set editors are used then there should be no problems, and I can understand this if I write ALL the code in the file; but I am confused about how this setting would work if I copy a snippit from eg a browser, or maybe some old code or something, or what if i used an entire old file. Surely I could easily end up with mixed CRLF and LF’s as some of the code I get might be CRLF and some LF? Or are editors so smart that they themselves convert any pasted in code on save?

EDIT:I suppose I should also be asking: Is it a real problem if the EOF’s are mixed?

Answer 1

The idea is, in order to avoid any issue with EOF, to use only editors:

• able to detect the current EOF style used by the opened file
• able to save that file with the same EOF style (so, no conversion on save)

That way:

• you keep your core.autocrlf to false (no conversion done automagically by git, unless you really need to: see “Why should I use core.autocrlf=true in Git?“)
• you work with different files having mixed EOF (but you don’t care because your editor will always “do the right thing”)