Re: [RFC/PATCH 1/9] ref-filter: add %(refname:lalignX) option

> Karthik Nayak <karthik.188@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Add support for %(refname:lalignX) where X is a number.
>> This will print a shortened refname aligned to the left
>> followed by spaces for a total length of X characters.
>> If X is less than the shortened refname size, the entire
>> shortened refname is printed.
>
> Why would we even want this kind of thing in the first place?  Is
> this to make it possible to re-implement some option that exists
> already in 'git branch' or 'git tag' as a thin wrapper on top of
> this underlying feature?
> As a low-level plumbing, I'd rather not to see such an elaborate
> formatting option added to for-each-ref; after all, the design of
> the command to allow its output properly script-quoted is so that we
> can offload such non-essential (meaning: does not need anything only
> Git knows; computing the display width of a string and filling the
> output space is an example.  As opposed to something like --merged
> that needs help from Git, which has the ultimate knowledge on the
> topology) processing to Porcelain that uses the command as plumbing.
>