[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

Re: bad output format design issue: svn log -v format is not parseable :-(

From: Bruce Elrick <bruce_at_elrick.ca>
Date: 2004-04-04 01:29:11 CEST

The XML standard states that all whitespace *between* tags, including line
feeds, is to be preserved by the parser. It is up to the application to
decide what to do. If your xml viewer is collapsing spaces then it is not
following the standard

I'm not sure what the standard says about spaces in tags, but I think that
can be changed without changing the semantic meaning of the XML.

So
<path
 action=">

can be changed to <path action="A"> because the carriage return is *in* the
tag, but

<sometag>
 Contents of the
 tag
</sometag>

Is such that the string representing the contents of the tag would be
"\n Contents of the\n tag\n"

The application could then choose to manipulate the string. The initial
line feed comes as a suprise to some people.

Cheers...
Bruce

C.A.T.Magic writes:

> Edmund Horner wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> C.A.T.Magic wrote:
>> | how can I tell, by looking at the output
>> | A \branches\release-0.28.0 (from \trunk:6846)
>> | if this means the filename
>> | "\branches\release-0.28.0 (from \trunk:6846)"
>> | or the file
>> | "\branches\release-0.28.0"
>> | ???
>> | this is evil!
>>
>> What about "svn log --xml" ? Hopefully it should output something that
>> is unambiguously machine readable (though requiring an XML parser, of
>> course).
>
> as far as i can see it the XML output has similar issues:
> space characters are not escaped and the filenames are
> not defined as string attributes but just as plaintext
> between tags.
> afaik, most XML parsers collapse multiple spaces into a
> single space.
>
> when i look at the xml with an xml-viewer the SVN output
> <path
> action="A">/trunk/ a file with 2 spaces</path>
> </paths>
> displays as
> <path action="A">/trunk/ a file with 2 spaces</path>
>
> but i also tried it with the ruby-xml parser
> and the parsed string was correct
> ( "/trunk/ a file with 2 spaces" )
>
> i'm not sure what the xml standard defines
> for multiple spaces in this case or how other xml
> parsers handle this.
>
> i noticed that other characters are escaped,
> for example semicolons ';' are handled,
> umlauts 'ö' remain as utf-8.
> <path
> action="A">/trunk/a&amp;b-ö;2 3.txt</path>
> </paths>
>
>
> but even IF i could use --xml for svn log,
> there are several other commands
> which fail in the same way:
> svn status -v
> 8 8 cat release-0.28.0 (from trunk6846)
> 11 11 cat a file with spaces
> 10 10 cat a&b-ö;2 3.txt
> 12 12 administrator johnMyFile.c
> 12 12 administrator johnMy spaced File.c
> ---
> and these commands cannot output xml.
>
> ======
> c.a.t.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
>
 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Sun Apr 4 01:29:50 2004

This is an archived mail posted to the Subversion Dev mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.