Additional thoughts to the original description:

* Having the rules from a table grouped is indeed useful, hence it would be nice to be able to specify --sort=table (currently it outputs "ovs-ofctl: table: unknown field name" as of 2.5.0 ovs-ofctl)

* Would it be possible e.g. to add an option for human-readable output (e.g. by enhancing -F option set) that would produce the rules formatted into the table?

* In this human-readable format, it would be beneficial to maintain a default set of displayed fields and sorting order, e.g. not to display cookie and have the rules sorted by table and priority. Still it should be possible for the user to specify displayed fields. 

* Readability would benefit if the names of the commonly used fields (e.g. priority, table, n_packets) were headers of the columns in a table with flows and did not repeat in every flow. Output might be e.g. as follows:

  table  priority  in_port  match                action
  0      10        *        icmp_type=136,icmp6  NORMAL
  0      0         *                             drop

* It would also help if the in_port and output port numbers were translated to port names in the human-readable format.

Run all OVS cases as regression test

[root@dell-per730-04 openvswitch]# rpm -q openvswitch
openvswitch-2.8.0-4.el7fdb.x86_64
[root@dell-per730-25 ~]# ovs-ofctl dump-flows ovsbr0
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.023s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=100,ct_state=-trk,tcp actions=ct(table=1)
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.044s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,arp,in_port=10 actions=output:11
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.042s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,arp,in_port=11 actions=output:10
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.039s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,arp,in_port=20 actions=output:21
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.037s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,arp,in_port=21 actions=output:20
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.034s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,sctp,in_port=10 actions=output:11
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.031s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,sctp,in_port=11 actions=output:10
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.029s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,sctp,in_port=20 actions=output:21
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.026s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=10,sctp,in_port=21 actions=output:20
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.047s, table=0, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, priority=1 actions=drop
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.021s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+new+trk,tcp,in_port=10,nw_src=16.0.0.0/24,nw_dst=48.0.0.0/16,tp_dst=80 actions=ct(commit),output:11
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.018s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+new+trk,tcp,in_port=21,nw_src=16.0.0.0/24,nw_dst=48.0.0.0/16,tp_dst=80 actions=ct(commit),output:20
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.015s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+est+trk,tcp,in_port=10 actions=output:11
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.013s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+est+trk,tcp,in_port=11 actions=output:10
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.010s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+est+trk,tcp,in_port=20 actions=output:21
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.007s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+est+trk,tcp,in_port=21 actions=output:20
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.005s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, ct_state=+inv+trk,tcp actions=drop
 cookie=0x0, duration=0.002s, table=1, n_packets=0, n_bytes=0, idle_age=0, actions=drop

Bug verification as comment#13 and regression test: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dxkFBIYQgoKejWvqj0umLr-e_MgGKG5dQ9sl6yCkJx8/edit#gid=279865799

Closing resolved bugs.