[bug #64100] wish/request: please reserve -printf "%V %v %E %R %r %B %e %J %I %z %x %X %j"

[James Youngman]

Follow-up Comment #1, bug #64100 (project findutils):

This is quite a sizeable chunk of the available namespace.  

I suggest instead we agree a compatible way to extend things while staying
mostly out of each other's way.   Here's a strawman:

%{ns/ns/path:keyword:flags}

Here "flags" is the usual size and so on.   ns/ns/path is just a namespace
which serves to prevent collision and keyword describes the data to be
formatted.   For example, 

%{gnu/find:version:-20}

might print the version number of a file, left-justified in a column of width
20.   Other implementations of course would be welcome to implement formatting
for gnu/find:version of course.

We put the flags after ! instead of before the { so that we don't have to skip
over flags to look at the keyword, and then have to go back to parse and
understand the flags.

I'm not sure that using : twice inside {} is a great idea because a different
choice would probably make parsing easier.   Since my first choice was !, I
changed my mind because of the need/difficulty of escaping ! on Unix systems. 
So I fell back on : but maybe there's a better choice.

This idea, by the way, is why GNU find's documentation lists %{ as reserved
for future use.




    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64100>

_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/