Re: $> git branch splat response considered harmful

> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 2:20 PM Bryan Turner <bturner@atlassian.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 2:08 PM <jim.cromie@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> fwiw,
>>>
>>> jimc@frodo:~/prj-1/capnproto.git$ git branch -l
>>> * master
>>>
>>> I find the splat in the response unhelpful
>>> when wrapped in shell for loop, the splat expands into everything in
>>> current directory
>>>
>>> jimc@frodo:~/prj-1/capnproto.git$ for b in `git branch -l`; do echo $b; done
>>> appveyor.yml
>>> c++
>>> CMakeLists.txt
>>> CONTRIBUTORS
>>> ...
>>>
>>> it would be nice if some flag combo would suppress that splat.
>>> save me from fugly brittle sh $IFS fiddlery and incomplete workarounds
>> Have you tried "git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short)"
>> refs/heads/"? That's going to provide short names for branches without
>> any indicator for the default branch, and without any special
>> ordering.
> More generally, I think you should take a look at `git help git` and
> check out the difference between "porcelain" and "plumbing" commands.
> The former, of which `git branch` is one, are intended for interactive
> use and not really meant for scripting or piping. You can usually come
> up with an equivalent from the plumbing commands, which Bryan has
> suggested for you with `git for-each-ref`.  Git project tries very
> hard to maintain output format of the plumbing commands so as to not
> break folks' scripts, but such promises aren't usually made for
> porcelain commands.
>