MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: [Q] Devices now showing up in FE.

> Yes, -listfull shows devices, because as a developer when I'm looking at a cryptic
> error message, I need to be able to answer questions like, "What the fuck is a
> mpcb071?" in a hurry. If I can't, it slows everything else down. Yes, -listxml worked
> with device names already, but it spews a pile of markup that's not conducive to
> being parsed by a human, especially with limited time for working on MAME and
> numerous other time pressures.
>
> On the other hand, the -listxml output is ideal for being parsed and transformed by
> other software, like a front-end or ROM manager. That's why we added it in the first
> place, and why we've tried to keep it relatively stable over the years. If you're not
> importing the -listxml output for your front-end, you have only yourself to blame
> when things break.

I feel the pain as well - my front-end also depends on a quick and simple game list to drive it rather than waiting 30+ second of capture and parsing of XML - not to mention XML breaking from time to time. Anyway, I suspect only way to really work with it at the moment and produce the only the game list is to monitor the first letter of the setname at each line and stop reading/capture of names as soon as the next entry is in not in sequential order since all the games fed first and are sorted with the devices thrown in afterwords.