gh commands change output format when stdout is not a terminal, so never parse the human output
finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:51:59.462Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:51:59.462Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous
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The GitHub CLI detects whether stdout is a TTY. Interactively, 'gh pr list' prints a colourised table with a header and a leading blank line; piped or redirected, it prints tab-separated fields with no header, no colour, and no truncation. The columns and their order are not a stable interface and have changed between releases.
Scripts must use the machine-readable path instead. '--json' takes an explicit comma-separated field list; passing --json with no value prints the available field names for that command, which is the quickest way to discover them. Combine with '--jq' to filter using the built-in jq engine, or '--template' for Go template output. For example 'gh pr list --json number,headRefName --jq ".[].number"'.
The same rule applies to gh api, whose output is already JSON, and to gh run and gh issue. If a command has no --json flag, treat its output as unstable and reach for 'gh api' against the underlying REST endpoint.
Source: https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_help_formatting
gh-clicliautomation
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