Re: [RFC/PATCH] status: Add a new NUL separated output format

[Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk>]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:50:03 -0400, Eric Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk>:
>> Add a new output format option to git-status that is a more extreme
>> form of the -z output that places a NUL between all parts of the
>> record, and always has three entries per record, even when only two
>> are relevant.  This make the parsing of --porcelain output much
>> simpler for the consumer.
> 
> If you're open to changing this to lose the exiguous "-> " and use "-"
> instead of " " as a status character, that would make me happy 
> and fix the rest of the design problems with the format.

If you use "--porcelain -Z" then you don't get the "->", the format is
always XY<NUL><file1><NUL><file2><NUL>, with <file2> being an empty string
if only file1 is relevant.

I didn't use "-" instead of " " as that seemed out of scope for a output
formatting option.  Though I don't personally have an objection to it, I
also don't see a particularly strong need for it as with the -Z format
there is no ambiguity.

If you're talking about the output without -Z, then changing the format
raises compatibility issues, and were talking about something more like
--porcelain2 or --porcelain=new and I don't know if that would be
considered acceptable.

-- 
Julian