export --format env writes an info header to stdout, complicating piping (--format json doesn't)

[jmoreno11]

Summary

fnox export --format env prepends an informational comment header (+ a blank line) to stdout, which complicates piping the output into tools that expect clean KEY=value lines.
--format json emits no such header, so the two machine formats are inconsistent.

Current behavior (fnox 1.29.0)

$ fnox export -P prod --format env
# Exported from profile: prod
# Exported at: 2026-07-08T15:49:13.822871+00:00
# Total secrets: 31

LOG_LEVEL=INFO
PGPORT=5432
...

The three # lines + blank line go to stdout (stderr is empty). --format json emits only the JSON object.

Why it's a papercut

The natural use of --format env is to feed a consumer. For instance:

mapfile -t vars < <(fnox export -P prod --format env)
az containerapp update ... --set-env-vars "${vars[@]}"

The header + blank line become bogus # Exported… / empty entries, so every such pipeline needs a | grep -vE '^#|^$' guard. Writing to a file (-o) is fine (a header comment in a .env file is even nice), it's specifically the piped-to-stdout case that suffers.

Possible directions (your call)

• Suppress the header when stdout isn't a TTY (auto-detect) — friendly header interactively, clean data in pipes.
• Write the header to stderr.
• Add a --no-header / --quiet flag.
• Match --format json and omit it for machine formats.

Happy to send a PR for whichever direction you'd prefer. Thanks for fnox!

Environment

• fnox 1.29.0 (macos-arm64)

[jdx]

Thanks for the clear write-up. I agree that --format env should be easy to pipe without every consumer having to strip comments first.

I opened #603 to make the env/shell formats emit clean data by default and add an explicit --header flag for cases where the metadata comments are useful. JSON/YAML/TOML keep their structured metadata behavior.

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