On Mon, Sep 09, 2019 at 11:02:07PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Eric Freese <ericdfre...@gmail.com> writes: > > > If the format string expands to an empty string for a given ref, do not > > print the empty line. > > > > This is helpful when wanting to print only certain kinds of refs that > > you can't already filter for. > > We tend to prefer stating the reason why we want to do so first and > then give a command to the codebase to "become like so". Here is to > illustrate how you would do it: > > The custom format specifier "--format=<format>" can be used to > tell the for-each-ref command to say nothing for certain kind of > refs, e.g. > > --format="%(if)%(symref)%(then)%(else)%(refname)%(end)" > > may be used to show the refname only for refs that are not > symbolic refs. Except that the command still would show one > blank line per each symbolic ref, which is fairly useless. > > Introduce the `--omit-empty-lines` option to squelch these > useless lines from the output.
Your proposed commit message (and the suggested code below) have a command-line option, but Eric's patch does it by default. Which do we want? :) I'm inclined to say that this new behavior should be the default; even though it's technically a compatibility change, I find it hard to imagine people would see it as a regression. But we could also introduce "--omit-empty-lines", and then flip the default. That gives an escape hatch of "--no-omit-empty-lines", at the minor cost of having to carry an option that we assume nobody would ever use. -Peff
