git default behavior seems odd from a Unix command line point of view

Hi all -

I am recently working within git after some experience with mercurial.
 I am observing what I believe to be an odd default behavior from the
perspective of UNIX command line tools.  I thought I'd share in case
this hasn't occurred to git maintainers or in case somebody has
developed good workaround practices.

ais@ace:bio[1]$ pwd /home/ais/repo/nps/projects/bio ais@ace:bio$ git status # On branch master nothing to commit (working directory clean) ais@ace:bio[1]$ git commit -a # On branch master nothing to commit (working directory clean) ais@ace:bio[1]$

The [1] in my prompt indicates the exit code of the git commands. What I find odd is that even with the -q option, you get this verbose output. Also, you get a non-zero exit status (which I would expect only on a failure such as presence of an unresolved conflict). My git usage is to have a number of small repositories and use a shell script to loop over them and perform a sync with a centralized server. Having all this wordy output on a "no sync necessary" scenario seems counter the desired properties of output only when work is taking place or when an error occurs.

Have others developed git practices to sync a bunch or repositories without all this verbose output on a "no change" scenario?

Andy