# Suggestion: git status --untracked 5 messages from 2008-02-11 to 2008-02-11. Participants: Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Matthieu Moy, Jeff King, Jakub Narebski. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/12029 ## Rafael Garcia-Suarez, 2008-02-11 09:46 Subject: Suggestion: git status --untracked Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/b77c1dce0802110146o708e26a7lef56683f6b823365%40mail.gmail.com ``` I find myself wanting sometimes to filter out the output of git-status, to feed it to another command (for example, git-add, or rm, or cat >> .gitignore). However it's not currently very easy to parse in a one-liner. I'm suggesting to add options to control this behaviour. My suggestion would be (for a start) to add an option --untracked that will list all untracked files on stdout, without a leading "#\t", and without listing the added / modified / removed files. I'm willing to implement it, but I'd like to have some discussion about the interface first. Is that a good idea at all, and how could it be improved interface-wise? ``` ## Matthieu Moy, 2008-02-11 10:13 Subject: Re: Suggestion: git status --untracked Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/vpq63wvztqc.fsf%40bauges.imag.fr In-Reply-To: ``` "Rafael Garcia-Suarez" writes: > I find myself wanting sometimes to filter out the output of > git-status, to feed it to another command (for example, git-add, or > rm, or cat >> .gitignore). However it's not currently very easy to > parse in a one-liner. > > I'm suggesting to add options to control this behaviour. My suggestion > would be (for a start) to add an option --untracked that will list all > untracked files on stdout, without a leading "#\t", and without > listing the added / modified / removed files. Actually, it's already available (since a few weeks in master IIRC, not sure whether it's in the latest release), as git ls-files --exclude-standard -o The --exclude-standard tells git ls-files to read .gitignore and friends as most commands do, and -o means "show 'other' files". Older gits didn't have the --exclude-standard, so you had to say --exclude-from=.git/info/exclude --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore (or stg like that) instead. -- Matthieu ``` ## Jeff King, 2008-02-11 10:23 Subject: Re: Suggestion: git status --untracked Message-ID: <20080211102359.GA5916@coredump.intra.peff.net> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20080211102359.GA5916%40coredump.intra.peff.net In-Reply-To: ``` On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 10:46:25AM +0100, Rafael Garcia-Suarez wrote: > I find myself wanting sometimes to filter out the output of > git-status, to feed it to another command (for example, git-add, or > rm, or cat >> .gitignore). However it's not currently very easy to > parse in a one-liner. Here's a one-liner: git status | sed -ne '/^# Untracked/,${s/#\t//p}' Unfortunately it is both specific to GNU sed as well as horribly unreadable. > I'm suggesting to add options to control this behaviour. My suggestion > would be (for a start) to add an option --untracked that will list all > untracked files on stdout, without a leading "#\t", and without > listing the added / modified / removed files. The problem you are running into is that "git status" has a specific purpose: generating the commit message template. Fortunately, it is built on top of plumbing that is much easier to parse: git ls-files -o --exclude-standard should produce the results you want. It even has a '-z' option to do things safely in the face of filenames with newlines, and can limit itself to partial paths. -Peff ``` ## Rafael Garcia-Suarez, 2008-02-11 10:54 Subject: Re: Suggestion: git status --untracked Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/b77c1dce0802110254g724d4218l7219c9d9f9ec8027%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On 11/02/2008, Matthieu Moy wrote: > Actually, it's already available (since a few weeks in master IIRC, > not sure whether it's in the latest release), as > > git ls-files --exclude-standard -o > > The --exclude-standard tells git ls-files to read .gitignore and > friends as most commands do, and -o means "show 'other' files". Ah, many thanks. (Still not familiar with the plumbing.) I'm already adding an alias for that command in my config! ``` ## Jakub Narebski, 2008-02-11 10:56 Subject: Re: Suggestion: git status --untracked Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/m3bq6ng3sb.fsf%40localhost.localdomain In-Reply-To: ``` "Rafael Garcia-Suarez" writes: > I find myself wanting sometimes to filter out the output of > git-status, to feed it to another command (for example, git-add, or > rm, or cat >> .gitignore). However it's not currently very easy to > parse in a one-liner. Probably because git-status is porcelain, and is meant to be used by end user, not in scripts. > I'm suggesting to add options to control this behaviour. My suggestion > would be (for a start) to add an option --untracked that will list all > untracked files on stdout, without a leading "#\t", and without > listing the added / modified / removed files. > > I'm willing to implement it, but I'd like to have some discussion > about the interface first. Is that a good idea at all, and how could > it be improved interface-wise? To list all untracked files you can use plumbing command, namely "git ls-files --others" (Show other files in the output), or perhaps "git ls-files -o --directory --no-empty-directory --exclude-standard" If you want to use git command in script, it is better to find appropriate plumbing command to do what you want, for example git-ls-files instead of git-status to list untracked files, git-symbolic-ref instead of git-branch to get current branch name, etc. -- Jakub Narebski Poland ShadeHawk on #git ```