Re: [PATCH 2/2] branch, for-each-ref: add option to omit empty lines

From: Øystein Walle <oystwa@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2023, 16:55 UTC
Message-ID: <CAFaJEqtxNa+fuuKzkKPLkF3qdYwZUj+tMKXB3u2ok6H008vjHA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqjzywg7sg.fsf@gitster.g>

On Fri, 31 Mar 2023 at 19:17, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

>
> Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Do the empty lines in the output serve any useful purpose? If not then
> > it might be better just to suppress them unconditionally rather than
> > adding a new command line option.
>
> It's a nice egg of columbus.
>
> It however theoretically can break an existing use case where the
> user correlates the output with a list of refs they externally
> prepared (e.g. "for-each-ref --format... a b c" shows "A", "", and
> "C", and the user knows "b" produced "").  I do not know how likely
> such users complain, though, and if there is nobody who relies on
> the current behaviour, surely "unconditionally omit" is a very
> tempting approach to take.
>
> Thanks.

I actually instinctively expected for-each-ref to suppress empty lines, at least by default. I don't see a good reason for them, except for something along the lines of what you said.

We can of course make it a config option along with the flag, then after some time flip the default, and perhaps ultimately remove the config option again. Perhaps in a v3 if there is enough interest; will send a v2 shortly. But I must admit I am not very motivated to follow that up down the line.

Øsse