---
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Machine-Readable Output - Command-Line"
---

# Machine-Readable Output

By default, the output of Packer is very human-readable. It uses nice
formatting, spacing, and colors in order to make Packer a pleasure to use.
However, Packer was built with automation in mind. To that end, Packer
supports a fully machine-readable output setting, allowing you to use
Packer in automated environments.

The machine-readable output format is easy to use and read and was made
with Unix tools in mind, so it is awk/sed/grep/etc. friendly.

## Enabling

The machine-readable output format can be enabled by passing the
`-machine-readable` flag to any Packer command. This immediately enables
all output to become machine-readable on stdout. Logging, if enabled,
continues to appear on stderr. An example of the output is shown
below:

```
$ packer -machine-readable version
1376289459,,version,0.2.4
1376289459,,version-prerelease,
1376289459,,version-commit,eed6ece
1376289459,,ui,say,Packer v0.2.4.dev (eed6ece+CHANGES)
```

The format will be covered in more detail later. But as you can see,
the output immediately becomes machine-friendly. Try some other commands
with the `-machine-readable` flag to see!

## Format

The machine readable format is a line-oriented, comma-delimited text
format. This makes it extremely easy to parse using standard Unix tools such
as awk or grep in addition to full programming languages like Ruby or
Python.

The format is:

```
timestamp,target,type,data...
```

Each component is explained below:

* **timestamp** is a Unix timestamp in UTC of when the message was
  printed.

* **target** is the target of the following output. This is empty if
  the message is related to Packer globally. Otherwise, this is generally
  a build name so you can relate output to a specific build while parallel
  builds are running.

* **type** is the type of machine-readable message being outputted. There
  are a set of standard types which are covered later, but each component
  of Packer (builders, provisioners, etc.) may output their own custom types
  as well, allowing the machine-readable output to be infinitely flexible.

* **data** is zero or more comma-seperated values associated with the prior
  type. The exact amount and meaning of this data is type-dependent, so you
  must read the documentation associated with the type to understand fully.

Within the format, if data contains a comma, it is replaced with
`%!(PACKER_COMMA)`. This was preferred over an escape character such as
`\'` because it is more friendly to tools like awk.

Newlines within the format are replaced with their respective standard
escape sequence. Newlines become a literal `\n` within the output. Carriage
returns become a literal `\r`.

## Message Types

The set of machine-readable message types can be found in the
[machine-readable format](/docs/machine-readable/index.html)
complete documentation section. This section contains documentation
on all the message types exposed by Packer core as well as all the
components that ship with Packer by default.
