dovecot - Mar 2015 - How about an option to disbale headers? (was Re: Patch for "doveadm -f table" nit)

On 03/18/2015 08:49 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> There's no reason why flow and pager should write headers to stderr
because it would always result only in a mess. But instead of changing table
headers to write to stdout, I think a better fix would be to make tab formatter
write headers to stderr. Including headers in stdout makes it more difficult to
write scripts that access the actual data. For example now you can do
"doveadm who -1 | sort" and the output will work. If headers were
written to stdout you'd have to make it more complicated. Also you can now
easily specify what you want to do with the headers, 2>/dev/null if you
don't care about them or 2>&1 if you want to include them in stdout
(which works even after |sort).
>
> So, I'll add in my v2.3 TODO that tab formatter should write to
stderr..
I've been using "-f flow fetch text | sed s/^text=//" when
training
spamassasin. Couldn't find a straightforward 'fetch raw message'.
Seems
unnecessarily awkward. Moving headers to stderr would help this, though.

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On Thu, 19 Mar 2015, Gedalya wrote:
> On 03/18/2015 08:49 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> There's no reason why flow and pager should write headers to stderr
because
>> it would always result only in a mess. But instead of changing table 
>> headers to write to stdout, I think a better fix would be to make tab 
>> formatter write headers to stderr. Including headers in stdout makes it
>> more difficult to write scripts that access the actual data. For
example
>> now you can do "doveadm who -1 | sort" and the output will
work. If headers
>> were written to stdout you'd have to make it more complicated. Also
you can
>> now easily specify what you want to do with the headers, 2>/dev/null
if you
>> don't care about them or 2>&1 if you want to include them in
stdout (which
>> works even after |sort).
doveadm .... 2> /dev/null
will suppress headers _and_ error messages
>> So, I'll add in my v2.3 TODO that tab formatter should write to
stderr..
>
> I've been using "-f flow fetch text | sed s/^text=//" when
training
> spamassasin. Couldn't find a straightforward 'fetch raw
message'. Seems
> unnecessarily awkward. Moving headers to stderr would help this, though.
>
How about a formatter option to enable/disable headers at all? Like,

who -H
ps h
ps --headers

Most probably it useful for scripts only, so add an option to suppress all
headers will fit most case.

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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On 19-3-2015 9:30, Gedalya wrote:
> On 03/18/2015 08:49 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>> There's no reason why flow and pager should write headers to stderr
>> because it would always result only in a mess. But instead of changing
>> table headers to write to stdout, I think a better fix would be to
>> make tab formatter write headers to stderr. Including headers in
>> stdout makes it more difficult to write scripts that access the actual
>> data. For example now you can do "doveadm who -1 | sort" and
the
>> output will work. If headers were written to stdout you'd have to
make
>> it more complicated. Also you can now easily specify what you want to
>> do with the headers, 2>/dev/null if you don't care about them or
2>&1
>> if you want to include them in stdout (which works even after |sort).
>>
>> So, I'll add in my v2.3 TODO that tab formatter should write to
stderr..
> 
> I've been using "-f flow fetch text | sed s/^text=//" when
training
> spamassasin. Couldn't find a straightforward 'fetch raw
message'. Seems
> unnecessarily awkward. Moving headers to stderr would help this, though.
I think that that is sort of forgoing the pupsoe of stderr.

Moving things to stderr for reasons of parsing and other trivia, just
complicates other sysadmin scripts where it is expected that only errors
are written to stderr. I would suggest to write all std-info just to
regular stdout, and deal with reporting tools just there.

just my 2 cts,

--WjW

On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:25, Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot at
smail.inf.fh-brs.de> wrote:
> 
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> 
> On Thu, 19 Mar 2015, Gedalya wrote:
>> On 03/18/2015 08:49 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>>> There's no reason why flow and pager should write headers to
stderr because it would always result only in a mess. But instead of changing
table headers to write to stdout, I think a better fix would be to make tab
formatter write headers to stderr. Including headers in stdout makes it more
difficult to write scripts that access the actual data. For example now you can
do "doveadm who -1 | sort" and the output will work. If headers were
written to stdout you'd have to make it more complicated. Also you can now
easily specify what you want to do with the headers, 2>/dev/null if you
don't care about them or 2>&1 if you want to include them in stdout
(which works even after |sort).
> 
> doveadm .... 2> /dev/null
> will suppress headers _and_ error messages
Hm. Yeah, that's not good.
>>> So, I'll add in my v2.3 TODO that tab formatter should write to
stderr..
>> 
>> I've been using "-f flow fetch text | sed s/^text=//"
when training spamassasin. Couldn't find a straightforward 'fetch raw
message'. Seems unnecessarily awkward. Moving headers to stderr would help
this, though.
>> 
> 
> How about a formatter option to enable/disable headers at all? Like,
> 
> who -H
> ps h
> ps --headers
> 
> Most probably it useful for scripts only, so add an option to suppress all
> headers will fit most case.
I guess that would be best. Added -h parameter now to hg. I didn't change
the stdout/stderr behavior for now - have to wait until v2.3 for that. I guess
that could also be changed to stdout then.