public static MetaDataFormatter getFormatter(HiveConf conf) {
    if (isJson(conf)) {
      return new JsonMetaDataFormatter();
    } else {
      return new TextMetaDataFormatter();
    }
  }
This class provides methods to format table and index information.
ql/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/ql/metadata/formatting/MetaDataFormatUtils.java