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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2023, 17:17 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqjzywg7sg.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <44e7ac0f-2fd9-fd01-89da-a8d036d2e400@dunelm.org.uk>

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.