svn commit: samba r4365 - in branches/SAMBA_4_0/source/client: .

[David Collier-Brown]

Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> While I can't complain about all these nice new features, I'm a bit
> worried about smbclient becoming rpcclient.   That is: we made a
> decision to declare rpcclient 'developer only' feature, because it was
> becoming unmaintainable, particularly in terms of not changing for
> scripts.  
> 
> How do we avoid repeating that?

	This doesn't address maintainability, but does make
	the task of keeping scripts working much easier...

	Define an option for parseable output, without
	indentation, line-wrapping or other formatting
	for human use.

	Let it produce a line from the current data, 
	optionally with a reserved version number at the beginning. 

	For example, pvs normally produces "chatty"
	output for humans on Solaris, thusly

froggy> pvs /usr/lib/libelf.so.1
	libc.so.1 (SUNW_1.1, SUNWprivate_1.1);
	libelf.so.1;
	SUNW_1.5;
	SUNW_1.4;
	SUNW_1.3;
	SUNW_1.2;
	SUNW_1.1;
	SUNW_0.7;
	SUNWprivate_1.1;
	
	But if you want it to shut up, you say

froggy> pvs -don /usr/lib/libelf.so.1
/usr/lib/libelf.so.1 -	SUNW_1.5;
/usr/lib/libelf.so.1 -	SUNWprivate_1.1;

	... and so get output suitable for a script to parse.

	With such line-oriented output you can always
	1) add columns to the right, and
	2) replace an obsolete columns with a "-"
	

	For example, imagine we wanted to add an OS
	release corresponding to the version number.
	This might look like

froggy> pvs -don /usr/lib/libelf.so.1
/usr/lib/libelf.so.1 -	SUNW_1.5	2.5.1
/usr/lib/libelf.so.1 -	SUNWprivate_1.1	2.0

	A shell script of the form
		cat $file |\
		while read path junk version rest; do
			...
		done
	will not notice that the "rest" token now contains
	a number, not just a newline.

--dave
-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
davecb at spamcop.net           |                      -- Mark Twain