Explicit command for particular behavior

[ryan at splintermail.com]

Hi Gnupg-Users,

I am developing an email service that automatically gpg-encrypts all
email that a user recieves before it is written to disk.  To manage this
reasonably, I was developing a tool for users to submit their public
key, as output from:

  gpg --export --armored some_key_id  >  keyfile

But then I wanted perform some basic checks on the file submitted, and I
found this fantastic behavior:

  cat keyfile | gpg --with-colons --with-fingerprints

which outputs something that is stable and easily parsable.  Except...
It also gives me the following error:

  gpg: WARNING: no command supplied.  Trying to guess what you mean ...

But I tried literally every command from `gpg --dump-options`, and
nothing replicated the output I needed without the same error.


So... is there a command that explicitly calls for the behavior I want?

Ryan


PS: I also discovered that gpgme is the "correct answer" to my problem,
but nonetheless I am curious why there is no command for this desired
output.