[GRASS-dev] g.region print flags combination

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, Glynn Clements wrote:

> 
> Martin Landa wrote:
> 
> > 3) The -p flag was changed.
> > 
> > projection: 99 (Krovak)
> > zone: 0
> > datum: towgs84=570.8,85.7,462.8,4.998,1.587,5.261,3.56
> > 
> > ->
> > 
> > projection : 99 (Krovak)
> > zone       : 0
> > datum      : towgs84=570.8,85.7,462.8,4.998,1.587,5.261,3.56
> > 
> > Not sure what formatting is more appropriate.
> 
> Personally, I would have added the padding after the colons, i.e.:
> 
> projection:  99 (Krovak)
> zone:        0
> datum:       towgs84=570.8,85.7,462.8,4.998,1.587,5.261,3.56
> 
> The reason being that a regexp such as "^([^:]*): *(.*)$" would still
> work as before.

There are some standards here - the one most often used in R for package 
management is DCF (Debian Control File):

"     DCF is a simple format for storing databases in plain text files
     that can easily be directly read and written by humans.  DCF is
     used in various places to store R system information, like
     descriptions and contents of packages.

     The DCF rules as implemented in R are:

        1.  A database consists of one or more records, each with one
           or more named fields. Not every record must contain each
           field, a field may appear only once in a record.

        2.  Regular lines start with a non-whitespace character.

        3.  Regular lines are of form 'tag:value', i.e., have a name
           tag and a value for the field, separated by ':' (only the
           first ':' counts). The value can be empty (=whitespace
           only).

        4.  Lines starting with whitespace are continuation lines (to
           the preceding field) if at least one character in the line
           is non-whitespace.

        5.  Records are separated by one or more empty (=whitespace
           only) lines.

"
where most often there is only one record. I have used this for reading in 
g.region output (in spgrass6), so would be happy to see something that can 
be parsed used. For that, padding is a pain by and large, and if people 
need pretty things, then a parsed text file can be fed to a GUI.

Roger 


> 
> > 4) g.region -g X g.region -pg
> 
> Should be equivalent, IMO.
> 
> >  --- I wanted to make -g flag more
> > universal, e.g. to distinguish
> > 
> > g.region -pcl
> > g.region -cl
> > 
> > and
> > 
> > g.region -pclg instead of g.region -gcl <-- problem
> > g.region -gcl <-- problem
> 
> What's the problem? That -g == -pg but -cg != -pcg?
> 
> That isn't a problem, IMHO. By making -g a synonym for -pg, you're
> only affecting the behaviour of a case which would otherwise be
> meaningless (the printing format doesn't matter if you don't print
> anything). Several other modules have similar behaviour, and some of
> it is significantly more irrational than this.
> 
> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no