Commit Graph

3 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Jan Polensky
7e38c7106b libutil: Avoid quoting CSV header cells unless FMT_QUOTEALL is set
This patch modifies the default behavior of CSV header generation:
header cells are no longer enclosed in double quotes unless the
FMT_QUOTEALL flag is explicitly set. According to RFC 4180, quoting is
only required when a cell contains control characters, commas, or double
quotes.

The goal of this change is to produce cleaner and more readable CSV
output by default, and to avoid unnecessary quoting in header rows. It
also simplifies algorithms that rely on FMT_UTIL and improves
compatibility with downstream tools expecting unquoted headers.

Tools that expect unquoted headers include:
 * SQL tools: Headers optional, usually unquoted
 * R (read.csv): Uses header=TRUE, no quotes needed
 * Pandas: Assumes headers, quoting not required
 * Excel: Detects headers; quotes only for special chars

Signed-off-by: Jan Polensky <japo@linux.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Steffen Eiden <seiden@linux.ibm.com>
2025-06-24 15:07:48 +02:00
Peter Oberparleiter
f6e932e0fd libutil: Make formatted meta-data configurable
Output generated using libutil's util_fmt_*() functions contains
meta-data such as hostname and time of invocation. When writing test
cases that compare expected and actual tool output, this run-time
variable information needs to be filtered out, resulting in increased
complexity.

To address this, add a global option to suppress meta-data output via
environment variable FMT_NOMETA. If set to '1', no meta-data will be
generated.

Example:

$ FMT_NOMETA=1 chpstat --format json

Reviewed-by: Steffen Eiden <seiden@linux.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Jan Höppner <hoeppner@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Steffen Eiden <seiden@linux.ibm.com>
2024-06-24 16:23:24 +02:00
Peter Oberparleiter
38ea8fc3ee libutil: add output format helpers
Add helper functions for converting structured key-value data into
different formats such as JSON, text pairs, and CSV.

Using these functions the resulting output format can be dynamically
configured at run-time without the need to duplicate output-generating
code for each format type. Also format-specific requirements such as
quoting, indentation, and comma-placement are automatically taken care
of.

Basic API calling sequence:

 util_fmt_init()      => Select output format
 util_fmt_obj_start() => Start a new object or list
 util_fmt_pair()      => Emit a key-value pair
 util_fmt_obj_end()   => End the most recent object or list
 util_fmt_exit()      => Cleanup

Notes:
 - Supported data elements are objects, lists and key-value pairs
   (mappings)
 - Scalars are only supported as part of a mapping

Reviewed-by: Jan Höppner <hoeppner@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Steffen Eiden <seiden@linux.ibm.com>
2024-05-27 16:52:23 +02:00