When patch outputs a file name in a diagnostic message, it can format the name in any of several ways. This can be useful to output file names unambiguously, even if they contain punctuation or special characters like newlines. The --quoting-style=word option controls how names are output. The word should be one of the following:
You can specify the default value of the --quoting-style option with the environment variable QUOTING_STYLE. If that environment variable is not set, the default value is ‘shell’, but this default may change in a future version of patch.