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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2023, 18:07 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqv8i8q3zj.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CAFaJEqtxNa+fuuKzkKPLkF3qdYwZUj+tMKXB3u2ok6H008vjHA@mail.gmail.com>

Øystein Walle <oystwa@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> 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.

That makes two of us ;-)

> 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.

Yeah, but this v2 is not starting with purely a new feature without breaking anybody, so we can stop here for now, and once there is enough interest to go through the deprecation dance, we can do that as a separate series later.

Thanks.