netdev - Re: [iproute PATCH v2 4/4] lib: Enable colored output only for TTYs

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Date:   Wed, 15 Aug 2018 10:43:25 -0600
From:   David Ahern <dsahern@...il.com>
To:     Phil Sutter <phil@....cc>,
        Stephen Hemminger <stephen@...workplumber.org>,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org, Till Maas <opensource@...l.name>
Subject: Re: [iproute PATCH v2 4/4] lib: Enable colored output only for TTYs

On 8/15/18 10:39 AM, Phil Sutter wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 10:24:31AM -0600, David Ahern wrote:
>> On 8/15/18 10:21 AM, Phil Sutter wrote:
>>> Add an additional prerequisite to check_enable_color() to make sure
>>> stdout actually points to an open TTY device. Otherwise calls like
>>>
>>> | ip -color a s >/tmp/foo
>>>
>>> will print color escape sequences into that file. Allow to override this
>>> check by specifying '-color' flag more than once.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Phil Sutter <phil@....cc>
>>> ---
>>> Changes since v1:
>>> - Allow to override isatty() check by specifying '-color' flag more than
>>>   once.
>>
>> That adds overhead to my workflow where I almost always have to pipe the
>> output of ip to a pager.
> 
> alias ip='ip -color -color'

no. Don't impact existing users.

> 
> Another alternative may be to introduce -autocolor flag. Establishing
> the same syntax as used by 'ls' is not as trivial due to the simple
> commandline parsing used in 'ip'.

I disagree with ignoring or overriding an argument a user passes in. You
are guessing what is the correct output and you are guessing wrong.
There is nothing wrong with piping output to a file and the viewing that
file through 'less -R'.

If a user does not want the color codes in the file, then that user can
drop the -color arg. iproute2 commands should not be guessing.