If you really intend to parse the output of "git status" (or any command, really) you want the --porcelain option which is guaranteed to stay somewhat stable an

If you really intend to parse the output of "git status" (or any command, really) you want the --porcelain option which is guaranteed to stay somewhat stable and parsable by scripts. Many other commands have such an option. As an example, iproute2 has -json.