Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] Add diff --porcelain option for --color-words

From: Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>
Date: Apr 3, 2010, 22:38 UTC
Message-ID: <87wrwoma9x.fsf@catnip.gol.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vmxxk8i01.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> How readable can you make this for human consumption while still keeping
> it machine readable?  The answer could be it already is human readble.
>
> Two reasons I ask the above question are that I find the feature quite
> interesting, and would want to see if it can be also fed to humans, and
> that the combination of this new option and the existing --color-words is
> misnamed.

There's the format used by the "wdiff" program, which is more like traditional diff output in that it doesn't use color, but is human friendly, and also seems to be somewhat machine-parseable:

   $ echo 'This is a test' > /tmp/a
   $ echo 'This is funky test' > /tmp/b
   $ wdiff /tmp/a /tmp/b
   This is [-a-] {+funky+} test

[I say "somewhat" because wdiff itself doesn't appear to escape potentially ambiguous content, e.g., if there's actually a "{+" in the file....]

-Miles

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