My `~/.gitconfig` starts like this: ``` [user] name = "Colin Watson" email = "cjwatson@debian.org" ``` It's been like that for a long time, so I don't remember whether an old version of `git config` wrote it like that, or whether I put it there by hand. Anyway, `git` itself has always been fine with this. The relevant part of git-config(1) says: > A line that defines a value can be continued to the next line by ending it with a \; the backslash and the end-of-line are stripped. Leading whitespaces after name =, the remainder of the line after the first comment character # or ;, and trailing whitespaces of the line are discarded unless they are enclosed in double quotes. Internal whitespaces within the value are retained verbatim. > > Inside double quotes, double quote " and backslash \ characters must be escaped: use \" for " and \\ for \. > > 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. But when I create a commit using `IndexFile.commit()`, I get this in the commit metadata, which I'm pretty sure is malformed: `Author: "Colin Watson" <"cjwatson@debian.org">` I think `GitConfigParser` should match the parsing rules that `git config` follows.