GNU bug report logs - #79442
RFE: process-lines equivalent for NUL-separated output

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Tim Landscheidt <tim <at> tim-landscheidt.de>
Cc: 79442 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#79442: RFE: process-lines equivalent for NUL-separated output
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2025 15:57:30 +0300

> From: Tim Landscheidt <tim <at> tim-landscheidt.de>
> Cc: 79442 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:00:37 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> >> The function process-lines executes a program and returns
> >> the lines of its output as a list.  However using newlines
> >> as output separators is prone to errors, and therefore many
> >> programs support using NUL (?\C-@) to separate their output.
> 
> >> Currently, with Emacs one needs to use constructs like:
> 
> >> | (split-string
> >> |  (shell-command-to-string
> >> |   (concat "foo "
> >> |           (shell-quote-argument "bar baz")))
> >> |  "\0"
> >> |  t)
> 
> >> It would be nice if Emacs shipped a function so that the
> >> above could be rewritten as:
> 
> >> | (process-output "foo" "bar baz")
> 
> > So you want process-lines to call split-string for you (given some
> > optional argument)?
> 
> I'm not sure whether it is possible to add an optional
> argument to process-lines as it passes the remaining
> arguments to the executed program.  How would such a call
> look like?

That's not the important part of my question.  I'm asking why is there
a need for a new function whose only job is to call split-string.

process-lines exists because several places in Emacs call it.  By
contrast, there was no reason until now to have a function that deals
with lines of output separated by nulls.  So adding such a function
would mean we have a function that no one calls, and why would we do
that, when the way to handle such output in a Lisp program is as
simple as a single call of an existing function?

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