Subject: Re: More git status --porcelain lossage

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:21:58 +0200

On Sat, 10 Apr 2010, Eric Raymond wrote:
> Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>:
>  
> > I could understand providing JSON format, specified using --json
> > option.
> 
> You know, that's actually an interesting idea.  I mentioned it
> previously as the not-XML if we want to build on a metaprotocol;
> I wasn't considering it seriously then.  But I am now, and it is
> not without attractions.  JSON would certainly solve all the delimiter
> and empty-object edge cases, and it has excellent extensibility.

It is a bit chatty, but is to some extent self documenting.

The question is whether it should output well formed array of objects,
or just list of objects not wrapped in array...

> >    I think there is some GPLv2 compatibile JSON generating code
> > in C (MIT licensed code is GPLv2 compatibilie, isn't it?); we can
> > always borrow compact JSON generation code from GPSD project (if
> > license allows it) from ESR.
> 
> My license would allow it, but there's not really a lot of win in 
> trying to reuse JSON generator code - writing your own printfs for
> it by hand is easy and fast.

What I am worrying about is correct handling of escaping, quoting,
and non-ASCII characters in strings (the JSON-quoting and JSON-escapes
are different than C escape codes, IIRC).  JSON rules are simple,
but are different than C.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland