From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43100) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ea0lX-0007H1-0h for guix-patches@gnu.org; Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:57:07 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ea0lT-0000HJ-3d for guix-patches@gnu.org; Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:57:07 -0500 Received: from debbugs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.43]:46058) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ea0lS-0000Go-Lr for guix-patches@gnu.org; Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:57:03 -0500 Received: from Debian-debbugs by debbugs.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1ea0lS-0008S5-E9 for guix-patches@gnu.org; Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:57:02 -0500 Subject: [bug#30053] [PATCH 1/3] Improve appearance of tabular output. Resent-Message-ID: Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 15:56:12 +0100 From: Danny Milosavljevic Message-ID: <20180112155612.5998bc36@scratchpost.org> In-Reply-To: <878td4nksy.fsf@gnu.org> References: <878td4nksy.fsf@gnu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-patches-bounces+kyle=kyleam.com@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-patches" To: Ludovic =?UTF-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: 30053@debbugs.gnu.org, Steve Sprang Hi Ludo, Hi Steve, terminals support setting tab stops. The user could (and arguably should) = just set them (see tabs(1). Example invocation: "tabs 1,20,25"). > I have a disappointing explanation I=E2=80=99m afraid: the reason columns= look > this way is because they are tab-separated, which in turn makes it easy > to filter with =E2=80=98cut=E2=80=99: Also, they are columns in a TABle. There's also "column -t" which one can pipe the output to, which will take = care of autosizing the columns.=20 It's typical of UNIX tools that they prefer machine readability to usabilit= y. There are always small tools like the ones above one can use (either be= fore the invocation or after the invocation) to make output more usable. That said, Steve even retains the tabs, so both use cases would be supporte= d. The only cost is that with the patch there's a lot of whitespace printe= d in columns that's actually not in the database at all. But that's OK I t= hink. Also, "guix package -A" (even before the patch) eats up all my 8 GB of RAM = on guix master and then my computer hangs. What's up with that? (I tried i= t 3 times now - it's reproducible) O_o