On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> "Currently we do not need it to reimplement the canned 'tag -l' >> format" is an OK and sensible justification to stick to the current >> implementation of %(padright:N), but we'd need to think if we would >> want to keep this limited and strange form that applies to a single >> atom that comes next (ignoring any literal spans) as a private >> implementation detail between ref-filter and "git tag". Opening it >> up to end-users would not mean we cannot add a correctly operating >> variant of "pad this string to the right" later, but it does mean we >> have to maintain %(padright) in this limited form forever. >> >> My knee-jerk reaction is that we probably should not want to expose >> this to the end users, and to discourage its use, perhaps name it >> somewhat strangely (e.g. "%(x-padright:N)" or something). > > I disagree. The current %(padright) fits 99.9% needs. It's handy for the > user if he wants a column-display with --format. It's consistant with > the "git log" %<() atoms. > > Sure, if the user wants really advanced formatting, it's not sufficient. > But first I believe this is a case of YAGNI, "right-pad an arbitrary > string" is a funny coding exercice, but not very useful in real-life. > And then, if one really has a use-case for advanced formatting, I think > a much better approach is to dump an easy-to-parse language > (XML/JSON/CSV/...) and pipe it to a formatter written in a real > programming language. It will always be more powerful than having to > chose in a limited set of %(atoms). > Exactly! what I was thinking, I mean this is quite useful feature in itself, Agreed there are numerous end cases which are not satisfied, but those are quite minimal and rarely used. -- Regards, Karthik Nayak -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html