# How can we make Grype's output more focused?

**URL:** <https://anchorecommunity.discourse.group/t/how-can-we-make-grypes-output-more-focused/57>\
**Category:** Grype\
**Created:** [August 5, 2024, 2:53pm UTC](https://anchorecommunity.discourse.group/t/how-can-we-make-grypes-output-more-focused/57 "2024-08-05T14:53:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![kzantow](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/anchorecommunity.discourse.group/kzantow/32/17_2.png) [@kzantow](https://anchorecommunity.discourse.group/u/kzantow)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2024, 8:28pm UTC](https://anchorecommunity.discourse.group/t/how-can-we-make-grypes-output-more-focused/57/4 "2024-08-22T20:28:20Z")

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First thing: I like the idea of _excluding_ suppressed things by default, and only including them with `--show-suppressed`, and my vote would be to make this consistent across all outputs – table and JSON, so a user does not get a large set of ignored matches by default.

As we talked about, this has overlap with a desire to consolidate parameters (such as `--only-fixed` and kin) and avoid making a large number of flags. See [Grype issue 197](https://github.com/anchore/grype/issues/197#issuecomment-1452583018) for the similar discussion/suggestion.

As such, I think most users understand the `ignore` feature, and I would think adding an ignore _flag_ might be a relatively simple path forward. Here’s what it looks like today in the config file:

```yaml
ignore:
  # This is the full set of supported rule fields:
  - vulnerability: CVE-2008-4318
    fix-state: unknown
    # VEX fields apply when Grype reads vex data:
    vex-status: not_affected
    vex-justification: vulnerable_code_not_present
    severity: medium # this doesn't exist today
    package:
      name: libcurl
      version: 1.5.1
      type: npm
      location: "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/**"

```

Let’s say the user just wants to ignore a vulnerability ID, this could potentially be mapped to a CLI flag like:

```shell
grype --ignore vulnerability:CVE-2008-4318

```

The CLI could be a bit smarter about it and allow for some specific known single values to omit the qualifier and/or specify multiple values with a list separated by something, e.g.:

```shell
grype --ignore CVE-2008-4318 --ignore not-fixed --ignore package-name:libcurl,package-version:1.5.1,package-type:npm

```

… as for the severity ignore, I can’t really think of a reason a user would want to ignore a specific severity but _include “lower” severities_, so I’d vote to make something like: `--ignore medium` identify that medium is a known severity keyword (or `--ignore severity:medium` with the qualifier), and ignore all matches with medium _and below_.

Perhaps there could be an flag to do opposite things, so `--only fixed` or `--only severity:medium` could behave as you might expect.

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