C.3.1 The common syntax

The administrative files such as commitinfo, loginfo, rcsinfo, verifymsg, etc., all have a common format. The purpose of the files are described later on. The common syntax is described here.

Each line contains the following:

• A regular expression. This is a basic regular expression in the syntax used by GNU emacs.
• A whitespace separator—one or more spaces and/or tabs.
• A file name or command-line template.

Blank lines are ignored. Lines that start with the character ‘#’ are treated as comments. Long lines unfortunately can not be broken in two parts in any way.

The first regular expression that matches the current directory name in the repository is used. The rest of the line is used as a file name or command-line as appropriate.