At the moment nettool outputs it's results as human readable plain text. But for scripting it would be nice if nettool can export it's result as CSV, JSON or similar.
nettool uses the same routines as in simutrans. Hence the same output. Or what do you refer too?
I'm referring to the console output. At the moment asking for online clients response looks like:
List of playing clients:
[ 2] .. 77.119.232.50
or even more complicated to process is the response for online companies:
Company #0: S?o Cruzer VB
Password: set
played by Michael at 1.234.56.78
Company #1: ?ffentliche Hand
Password: NOT set
unlocked for [0] Server#0 at 0.0.0.0
unlocked for [2] Michael at 1.234.56.78
played by Michael at 1.234.56.78
played by Citarofahrer at 1.234.56.78
played by Ophiucchus at 1.234.56.78
Company #2: Flemmolistik
Password: NOT set
unlocked for [0] Server#0 at 0.0.0.0
unlocked for [2] Michael at 1.234.56.82
played by Nils at 1.234.56.81
played by Nils at 1.234.56.80
played by Nils at 1.234.56.79
played by Nils at 1.234.56.78
played by Ophiucchus at 1.234.56.78
Company #5: Greenrail Ltd.
Password: set
played by greenlamp35 at 1.234.56.78
Company #6: Citaro Transport
Password: NOT set
founded by Citarofahrer at 1.234.56.78
unlocked for [0] Server#0 at 0.0.0.0
unlocked for [2] Michael at 1.234.56.78
played by Citarofahrer at 1.234.56.78
played by Taurus at 1.234.56.78
Company #12: Fietogistics
Password: set
played by Ophiucchus at 1.234.56.79
played by Ophiucchus at 1.234.56.78
played by Ophiucchus at 1.234.56.77
To use that information in a script I need to apply a regular expression to fetch information from that plain text information. It would be great to have a switch like "--format CSV" or "--format JSON" which will format the response as the declared output format.
Honestly, I suggest to make a small patch for it. If you can do regexp, doing the desired output in C++ is a piece of cake. Then I would not have to guess what you would like most.