does exiftool -forcePrint (-f) empty tags?

[redir]

Note #2 under http://www.exiftool.org/index.html#tagnames says:

2. When extracting information, tags will not appear in the output unless they exist in the file, even if they are specified on the command line. The -f option may be used to force all specified tags to be displayed.

The documentation at http://www.exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html#f says:

With this option, a dash (-) is printed for the value of any missing tag

However, when I run a command with exiftool version 9.90 on linux:

exiftool 201405140003HQ.tif -G -s -f -a  -IPTC:All

I don't see any missing tags from -IPTC:All fliled with "-" that I would expect. I cannot tell from the docs if I should or not. It depends on how I read it. Should I?

[Phil Harvey]

No.  I can see how this could be misleading, but this applies only tags specified by name on the command line (eg. -iptc:keywords).  It would be crazy to output all non-existent tags in an entire group.  (In fact, not possible, because ExifTool doesn't even know what these should be.)

I'll see about clarifying this in the documentation.

- Phil

[redir]

I figured about as much. Thanks much for clarifying, Phil.