Re: More git status --porcelain lossage

Simon [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

A format properly designed for script parseability should use even use
whitespace as a field separator.

Why?

Because if you do that, front ends *will* do field analysis using a
naive split-on-whitespace operation.  And then...someday...someone
will try to run one of these of these on a volume from a system where
filenames contain embedded whitespace.  Like Mac OS X or Windows.

Why not use an XML output?
Plain text is easier to parse, but XML may give this extra durability
you are looking for?

Are out of your f**g mind?  XML, really?  XML might be good choice to
*define* _document_ formats, but is really poor data exchange /
serialization format (being overly verbose, among others).  Also, XML
is not language but meta-language.

I could understand providing JSON format, specified using --json
option.  I think there is some GPLv2 compatibile JSON generating code
in C (MIT licensed code is GPLv2 compatibilie, isn't it?); we can
always borrow compact JSON generation code from GPSD project (if
license allows it) from ESR.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git