From: Jakub Narebski Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:01:41 GMT Subject: Re: More git status --porcelain lossage Message-ID: In-Reply-To: Simon writes: > > A format properly designed for script parseability should use even use > > whitespace as a field separator. > > > > Why? > > > > Because if you do that, front ends *will* do field analysis using a > > naive split-on-whitespace operation.  And then...someday...someone > > will try to run one of these of these on a volume from a system where > > filenames contain embedded whitespace.  Like Mac OS X or Windows. > > Why not use an XML output? > Plain text is easier to parse, but XML may give this extra durability > you are looking for? Are out of your f**g mind? XML, really? XML might be good choice to *define* _document_ formats, but is really poor data exchange / serialization format (being overly verbose, among others). Also, XML is not language but meta-language. I could understand providing JSON format, specified using --json option. I think there is some GPLv2 compatibile JSON generating code in C (MIT licensed code is GPLv2 compatibilie, isn't it?); we can always borrow compact JSON generation code from GPSD project (if license allows it) from ESR. -- Jakub Narebski Poland ShadeHawk on #git