I noticed the new "always output a stanza" behavior in dctrl-tools 2.19. I really dislike it, but I can at least buy the machine-parsing consistency argument. So I wrote the patch below, which at least adds an option for human viewers to get the original behavior.
-- >8 -- Subject: [PATCH] grep-dctrl: add --compact option When only one field is being shown, grep-dctrl's original behavior was to "compact" the output to remove the empty-line stanza separator. This made the output more pleasant for a human viewer, but inconsistent with the multiple-field case for machine parsing. Version 2.19 made things more consistent by unconditionally showing the stanza separator. This patch adds a --compact flag which lets human viewers restore the old behavior. Signed-off-by: Jeff King <[email protected]> --- I tried to match the indentation conventions of the file, but it seems that some lines are indented with pure spaces, and some with tabs. The size of the spacing is right, but I don't always match the surrounding lines for tabs vs spaces. I can re-roll the patch if you want me to use one or the other. A few alternatives I considered were: 1. Instead of --compact, you could actually manually specify a stanza separator. I didn't do this, because I want it to auto-select between the 1-field and many-fields cases (and that option would be easy to add later if somebody wants it). 2. I considered making --compact the default, which would un-break any scripts depending on the old behavior that are now broken by 2.19's behavior. However, in the long run, the non-compact behavior is more consistent for machine-parsing. I don't know how you want to handle backwards script-compatibility in general. 3. For multi-line fields like "description", I actually think the stanzas can help readability. Auto-selecting whether to output a separator in compact mode based on the field type might be nice. But that could easily come in a later patch if we want it. grep-dctrl/grep-dctrl.c | 16 +++++++++++----- 1 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/grep-dctrl/grep-dctrl.c b/grep-dctrl/grep-dctrl.c index 1526e0a..902a33d 100644 --- a/grep-dctrl/grep-dctrl.c +++ b/grep-dctrl/grep-dctrl.c @@ -61,7 +61,8 @@ enum { OPT_GE, OPT_MMAP, OPT_IGN_ERRS, - OPT_PATTERN + OPT_PATTERN, + OPT_COMPACT }; #undef BANNER @@ -142,6 +143,7 @@ void banner(bool automatic) { "ignore-parse-errors", OPT_IGN_ERRS, 0, 0, N_("Ignore parse errors") }, { "pattern", OPT_PATTERN, N_("PATTERN"), 0, N_("Specify the pattern to search for") }, { "whole-pkg", 'w', 0, 0, N_("Match only whole package names (this implies -e)") }, + { "compact", OPT_COMPACT, 0, 0, N_("Omit stanza separator when only one field is shown") }, { 0 } }; @@ -211,6 +213,8 @@ struct arguments { struct ifile fname[MAX_FNAMES]; /**/ size_t show_fields[MAX_FIELDS]; + /* compact output? */ + bool compact; }; #define IS_SHOW_FIELD(field_app_data) ((field_app_data) & 1) @@ -438,6 +442,10 @@ static error_t parse_opt (int key, char * arg, struct argp_state * state) debug_message("parse_opt: --config-file", 0); args->rcname = strdup(arg); break; + case OPT_COMPACT: + debug_message("parse_opt: compact", 0); + args->compact = 1; + break; default: return ARGP_ERR_UNKNOWN; } @@ -919,10 +927,8 @@ int main (int argc, char * argv[]) show_field(&args, ¶, fa); } } - /* let's see how many users howl in pain after - deactivating this conditional (see BTS #525525) - - if (args.num_show_fields > 1)*/ puts(""); + if (!args.compact || args.num_show_fields > 1) + puts(""); } fsaf_close(fp); -- 1.7.7.2.4.gfd7b9 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
