Is your example situation really all that common? If so, what format do you expect for the output? If it's one filename-per-line then how do you encode filena

Is your example situation really all that common? If so, what format do you expect for the output? If it's one filename-per-line then how do you encode filenames with embedded newlines? How do you encode non-UTF8 characters, or is the file meant to be parsed only in binary mode? I don't know of any generally agreed upon spec for this, so no matter what you think is right, most people are going to have to write a special-purpose parser. In which case you might as well parse the native strace output since one is about as complex as the other.