bazelbuild/bazel

Add --null flag to aquery and cquery

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#28982 opened on Mar 13, 2026

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P3help wantedteam-CLItype: feature request

Description

Description of the feature request:

The bazel query command supports a --null flag which expands out to --line_terminator_null=true.

This feature is useful for piping the output of the query command. The \0 (NUL) character is useful to unambiguously separate the output. Other tools such as GNU parallel, xargs, find, grep, etc... support separating input/output with NUL characters.

For all the reasons that the --null flag is useful for query, it should be added to aquery and cquery as well for consistency. They already support the --line_terminator_null flag anyway.

Which category does this issue belong to?

CLI

What underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?

There is an inconsistency in between query, aquery, and cquery commands.

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

Linux

What is the output of bazel info release?

release 7.7.1

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

No response

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD ?

https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel.git
8b330812188b7323e852f733344fc5e1645f1a08

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

No response

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

No response

Contributor guide

Tech stack
java
Domain
cli
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Bazel basicsJava familiarityCLI flag implementation
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
85
Research direction
The null flag is already implemented for the `query` command. To add it to `aquery` and `cquery`, examine the command definitions in the Bazel source code, likely in `src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/query2/`. Look for how ` line terminator null` is handled for those commands and add the ` null` alias. The `query` command's flag definition serves as a template. No linked PRs or comments exist yet, so this is a clean feature to implement.