Plumbing commands (was: Bug report - git show <tagname> together with --pretty=format)

On 2009-04-08 18:37 (+0200), Santi Béjar wrote:

In addition to what Michael said, you should use the plumbing commands
instead of the porcelain (see man git). They are specifically for use
with scripts and parse their output. The output from the porcelain
commands can change.

Hmm, I've been using a command like this in a script:

    date=$(git log -1 --pretty=format:%ai $REV)

Would it be better to change it to

    date=$(git rev-list -1 --pretty=format:%ai $REV | sed -e 1d)

or something else?