Re: "log --pretty=format:" language

Teemu Likonen [off-list ref] writes:

Jeff King wrote (2008-08-20 14:00 -0400):

quoted

There is a lot of room for discussion here.

For example:

  - what should %d show? Right now it shows each decoration, split by
    commas. It doesn't show the enclosing parentheses automatically.

    Is this too strict? Should there be some way of pulling out
    individual decorations from the list, or specifying a different
    delimiter? If so, probably that should be part of a general
    improvement in the format expansion macro language.

If such "general improvement" takes place I'd like to point out (most 
likely old news, but anyway) that %b can't be indented in practical 
sense. For example [...]

We can take a look how rpm handling of --queryformat option handles
it.  

First, it uses %{NAME} notation instead of %X shorthand for writing
single header (git-for-each-ref uses %(name) instead, so we might want
to use %(...) instead of %{...}, or use both).  It allows use of
printf(3) type formatters, which include field width and align, for
example "%-30{NAME} %10{SIZE}\n".

Second, for displaying arrays (like list of files, or list of
dependencies) or multi line output like package description it prints
each item in the array, or each line in multi-line field within qeuare
brackets, e.g. "[%-50{FILENAMES} %10{FILESIZES}\n]".  If one want to
repeat single-valued field one should use %{=NAME} syntax (actually it
simply takes first line/first element of array), e.g. 
"[%{=NAME}: %{FILENAMES}\n]"

Queryformat minilanguage is more reach, see /usr/share/doc/rpm-*/queryformat
or http://rpm5.org/docs/api/queryformat.html

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git