Eric Freese <ericdfreese@xxxxxxxxx> 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. > @@ -2395,9 +2395,10 @@ void show_ref_array_item(struct ref_array_item *info, > if (format_ref_array_item(info, format, &final_buf, &error_buf)) > die("%s", error_buf.buf); > fwrite(final_buf.buf, 1, final_buf.len, stdout); > + if (final_buf.len) > + putchar('\n'); While we are introducing a conditional, let's drop the useless fwrite of 0-byte while we are at it [*1*], i.e. if (final_buf.len && !omit_empty_lines) { fwrite(final_buf.buf, 1, final_buf.len, stdout); putchar('\n'); } Thanks. [Footnote] *1* "While we are at it", the existing code tempts me to drop fwrite and replace it with something along the lines of... printf("%*s\n", count, buf) but I refrained from doing so. An enhancement patch like this is not a place to "improve" existing code (which should be done as a separate patch).