On 25/07/16 07:38AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:

On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 02:15:07PM -0500, Justin Tobler wrote:

quoted

Also, as mentioned in a comment for the previous patch, maybe we should
support printing two output modes. For the default output, maybe a
simple `<key>=<value>\n` where the any value containing special
characters is quoted via `quote_c_style()`.

A null-terminated output, such as the one proposed in this patch, could
be enabled via a `-z` flag similar to how its done in other commands.

Agreed in general, but instead of using `-z` I wonder whether it would
make sense to use something like `--format=key-value` and `--format=nul`
instead. This gives us more room to introduce additional formats in the
future, like for example the JSON format that was scrapped for now.

If we already plan to support additional output formats, they I agree we
should probably a `--format=<output-type>` flag from the start. I still
think it would be nice to have a `-z` flag that is shorthand for
`--format=nul` though as that is fairly common across other commands to
have such an option.

Out of curiousity, is there a reason we are interested in supporting a
JSON output format in addition to what is already proposed? From an
earlier conversation I had with Lucas, it didn't seem like there was any
particular reason for JSON.

-Justin